The Evolution of the Universe: Big Bang to Heat Death

Greetings to the Mes Science Community,

It's your young writer and science enthusiasts @skyehi back again for any episode of physics and theoretical science.

In yesterday's blog post, we discussed the multiverse Theory and our summary was that the universe we're in is basically a single thread in the entire cosmic sweater.

In today's blog post I'll briefly discuss the evolution of the universe, from the theoretical history of the Big Bang to the hypothetical prediction of the future or the end of the universe, the Heat Death.

Original Image Source by DeSa81 from Pixabay

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The Big Bang: A Cosmic Boom

Let me briefly narrate the story of the universe as it was taught to us in science classes. 😁

Now around 13.8 billion years ago, the universe was like a tiny hot dot. This dot was described to be like a ball of energy.

Then suddenly "BAM!" it exploded resulting into the creation of space, time, forces, energy and everything that we have come to observe in our eternal universe.

It's basically like the mother of all fireworks shows.

Now when you explain the big bang theory to people that are not that well-versed in physics and cosmology, they imagine the big bang as a super huge explosion.

You may think this would probably be the loudest event in the history of existence right?

The truth is that it was a completely silent bang! Do you want to know why?

Well it's pretty logical that the big bang really had no explosive sounds because sound energy didn't exist at that time. I hope you understand why the Big Bang wasn't actually a bang as you may think of it.

Certain forces and energies only existed after the Big Bang.

Now another interesting fact about the Big Bang is the speed at which it happened.

Now if you thought the famous superhero Flash or superman was fast, the Big Bang occured millions of times faster than that.

Everything happened instantly and instantaneously. I wouldn't want to go too much into the details but a lot happened before the very first element, hydrogen was created.

After hydrogen then came some helium and a fewer lithium. These were the only elements that existed at the beginning of the universes existence.

Now during the early phase of the universe, two types of particles existed; Matter and Antimatter.

When these two particles met, they basically annihilated each other.

Here's the miracle of the universe; if it wasn't so that there was a little bit more matter than anti matter after the annihilation, we wouldn't have any matter in our universe, from stars to supernovas, everything would have been gone.

The universe would have been an empty space of only energy and nothingness.

This is one of the mysteries of the birth of our universe. The little matter that was left after the great annihilation is what makes up all the matter that we see and have in our universe.

Galactic Building Blocks: Stars, Planets and all matter

The Big Bang produced a level of heat like never before. The kind of heat that was produced by the big bang is not your regular hot fire. That level of heat does not just burn but literally disintegrates particles.

However after the Big Bang, things cooled down a bit, and clumps of particles and matter started sticking together thanks to the force of gravity.

That's basically how galaxies, stars, and planets were born. The debris of the Big Bang explosion came together to form this structures we see in our seemingly endless universe.

The Mysterious Dark Energy: The Universe's Sneaky Force

Now about 5 billion years ago, the scientists discovered that our universe was speeding up its expansion.

One thing we now know about the universe is that it's expanding in size at an accelerating mode. It's literally getting wider and going further faster each time.

Theoretically it's because of the existence of Dark energy in the universe. It's like gravity's rebellious cousin. They're literally having a cosmic tug-of-war.

Now at the beginning of the Big Bang, the energy produced from the bang is what actually started the universe's expansion. But just like throwing a ball, it gets to a point when the ball's momentum reduces and it stops flying.

This is how the universe was supposed to behave but it seems there's yet another force causing further expansion. This is the work of Dark energy.

Gravity pulls the galaxies closer to each other while dark energy pushes the galaxies apart from each other.

Our universe is basically made up of galaxies. So whether our universe is expanding or contracting depends on which force dominates over the galaxies, dark energy or gravity.

Like I said, a cosmic tug of war

The Heat Death: The Universe's Icy Retirement Plan😂

This is basically a hypothetical prediction of how the entire universe will end. First of all guys no one should panic because you won't even live long enough to experience this. It's millions or even billions of years from now.

The hypothesis was gotten from the observation of how our universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.

In the distant future, as stars fizzle out and all things in our universe drift apart, the universe will eventually get colder and colder.

It's almost like the universe is retiring to a deep freeze.

This is why the hypothesis is called the Heat Death. No more heat basically means the end of all life, the sun and even loss of energy. The stars will slowly and gradually die off as well.

From the epic Big Bang to the cosmic freezer, the universe's journey is really one heck of a ride.

I sit back and observe our wonderful and mysterious universe and how science has helped us discover all these strange bodies and concepts like dark matter, black holes, dark energy and even supernovas.

The universe is truly beautiful and it's a gift for people to have the chance to experience the entirety of the universe from the surface of a tiny little sperk called Earth.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read today's blog post. I hope you found it both informative and entertaining.

As always my blogs are opened for any question or any comment regarding the blog topics. I'll be more than happy to respond to your comments.

Have a lovely science day and catch you next time on MES Science. Goodbye ❤️

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