The Big Bang Theory Summarized

June 22, 2012

The Big Bang theory has been accepted by a majority of scientists today. It theorizes that a large quantity of nothing decided to pack tightly together and then explode outward into hydrogen and helium. This gas is said to have flowed outward through frictionless space (frictionless, so the outflowing gas cannot stop or slow down) to eventually form stars, galaxies, planets, and moons.

The originator was George Lemaitre, a Belgian, who struck on the basic idea in 1927. George Gamow, R.A. Alpher, and R. Herman devised the basic Big Bang model in 1948. But it was Gamow, a well-known scientist and sci-fi writer, that gave it its present name and then popularized it (Isaac Asimov, Asimov’s New Guide to Science, 1984, p. 43). Campaigning for the idea enthusiastically, he was able to convince many other scientists. He used quaint little cartoons to emphasize the details. The cartoons really helped sell the theory.

According to the theory, in the beginning, there was no matter, just nothingness. Then this nothingness condensed by gravity into a single, tiny spot and it decided to explode.

That explosion produced protons, neutrons, and electrons which flowed outward at incredible speed throughout empty space; for there was no other matter in the universe.

As these protons, neutrons, and electrons hurled themselves outward at supersonic speed, they are said to have formed themselves into typical atomic structures of mutually orbiting hydrogen and helium atoms.

Gradually, the outward-racing atoms are said to have begun circling one another, producing gas clouds which then pushed together into stars.

These first stars only contained lighter elements (hydrogen and helium). Then all of the stars repeatedly exploded. It took at least two explosions of each star to produce our heavier elements. Gamow described it in scientific terms: In violation of physical law, emptiness fled from the vacuum of space and rushed into a superdense core that had a density of 1094gm/cm2 and a temperature in excess of 1039 degrees absolute. That is a lot of density and heat for a gigantic pile of nothingness, especially when we realize that it is impossible for nothing to get hot. Although air gets hot, air is matter, not an absence of it.

Where did this “superdense core” come from? Gamow solemnly came up with a scientific answer for this; he said it came as a result of “the big squeeze,” when the emptiness made up its mind to crowd together. He named this solid core of nothing “ylem” (pronounced “ee-lum”). Numbers were provided to add an additional scientific flair: This remarkable lack-of-anything was said by Gamow to have a density of 10 to the 145th power g/cc, or one hundred trillion times the density of water.

Then all that packed-in blankness went boom!

That is the theory.