The Birth of the Big Bang and the Timeline of Everything We Know

Modern scientific thought owes itself to the contributions of many great men and women. Without these individuals, our universe would (literally) look quite different. However, there are two scientists in the field of cosmology who stand out among all the rest: Edwin Hubble and Georges Lemaître. By 1930, other cosmologists had concluded that the static (non-evolving) model of the universe was unsatisfactory.

This discovery is largely due to the efforts of Edwin Hubble. Using the world’s largest telescope, which is located at Mt. Wilson in California, he showed that the distant galaxies all appeared to be receding from us. What"s more, these far flung galaxies were traveling away from us at speeds proportional to their distances -- Enter Lemaître -- Lemaître used these findings to draw attention to his earlier paper, in which he explained the relationship between the distance of a galaxy and the recession velocity of that same galaxy. By putting together Hubble’s observations with Lemaître’s paper, a majority of astronomers became convinced that the universe was indeed expanding. This revolutionized the study of cosmology.

Why was this find so notable? Shortly after this discovery, Lemaître reasoned that traveling back in time should lead to an epoch in which all the matter in the universe was packed together in an extremely dense state – a primeval atom. And this was the birth of Big Bang cosmology.

So, let us take a moment to delve into the Big Bang--into the timeline of everything that has ever existed...

Image:
NASA/ESO

Ghost Galaxies: A Cosmic Riddle

See this lovely image? Any guesses as to what you are looking at? (Hint: It"s not the Hubble Ultra Deep Field or any similar image) What may look like nothing, for all intents and purposes, is actually a full blown galaxy -- with a twist. This galaxy is almost lacking in stars entirely.

You see.. There are ghosts all around us, that is, assuming your definition of a ghost extends to extremely faint galaxies with very few stars; and by very few, I do mean very few. You could probably count the number of stars in these galaxies within minutes, as these galaxies contain hundreds, or maybe a couple thousands, of stars. That’s right, we are talking about numbers 3 or 4 digits long -- numbers that probably resemble your bank account. (In contrast, our galaxy - the Milky Way - contains an estimated 4 billion stars) These so-called "ghost galaxies" have intrigued astronomers for several years now.

But maybe not for the reasons you"d think: http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/ghost-galaxies-a-cosmic-riddle/

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and T. Brown (STScI)

Introduction to the Anti-matter Mystery:

Apart from dark matter, dark energy, black holes, and the missing-baryons of the universe, one of the most captivating mysteries in modern day physics centers on antimatter. Particularly, it focuses on the metaphorical fight between regular matter and antimatter, which were both created in equal proportions during the inception of the universe about 14 billion years ago.

It"s as much of a philosophical question as it is a question of general physics. If antimatter had won out, none of our physical universe (including us) would exist, since both would have annihilated each other in bursts of pure radiation, leaving behind energy and a bright but featureless universe. So, to what exactly do we owe the extended presence of normal matter?

Find out at:
http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/introduction-to-the-anti-matter-mystery/

Image via CERN

Explaining Dark Matter: Axions

Many of you probably understand the basics of an elusive type of matter called dark matter, something that is required to explain numerous anomalous characteristics of the universe. The most prominent features that dark matter explains are the observed gravitational lensing from low visible matter galaxies and the large structure formation observable in the cosmic microwave background radiation. If you need a refresher course, you can read about dark matter here: http://tinyurl.com/darkFQTQ

The ambiguous name "dark" matter, reflects our inability to figure out what this matter is; however, we do have a few ideas about what this form of matter could be made of. One of these hypothetical particles is called axions. Sometimes called sterile neutrinos, they are certainly not a new idea in the field of particle physics. It was first proposed in 1977. These particles are described as having no spin and no charge; in addition, they are described as interacting noticeably with the strong and weak force and having meager mass (considerably less than an electron).

Knowing what exactly constitutes dark matter is fairly important to cosmology, considering over 80% of the matter in the universe makes up it.

So let"s take a closer look at axions:
http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/explaining-dark-matter-axions/

MOND: Trying to Solve the Problem of the Missing Universe

One of the greatest mysteries of astronomy is the problem of the missing universe. Well, the universe isn’t exactly missing, but a lot of its mass is. Ultimately, all of the matter scientists can see in the universe accounts for only a small percent of the observed gravity. Everything on Earth, everything we’ve ever observed with our instruments, all normal matter—it all adds up to less than 5% of the Universe. Essentially, some unobservable something in influencing the motions of the cosmos.

Astronomers often use dark matter to explain this missing matter. However, the dark matter interactions that scientists believe they observed remain inconclusive. Thus, scientists have yet to definitively determine that dark matter exists. In fact, we may never actually be able to detect it... and it isn"t ideal at predicting all manner of situations. As you see, dark matter does have some problems.

Some researchers think that the problem is really our understanding of gravity. In order to explain why the universe seems to behave as if there"s so much more matter in it, some scientists advocate MOND (Modified Theory of Newtonian Dynamics) instead of dark matter.

Learn about this alternative at:
http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/mond-trying-to-solve-the-problem-of-the-missing-universe/

Image source:
http://astroweb.case.edu/ssm/mond/DMtrees.html

6 Mysteries of Our Solar System

In this day and age, our species has accomplished several note-worthy feats. We"ve sent human beings into space and touched down on the moon. We"ve been able to visit and probe each and every one of the gas-giants that reside in our solar system, revealing our local neighborhood to be full of many incredible worlds. We"ve even sent two separate probes on their way into interstellar space. A accomplishment that is slightly sullied considering the fact that we"ve even been able to figure out the mass and composition of planets and stars that are hundreds of thousands of light-years away from home. Even with our book of knowledge growing by the second, we would be naive to think we have all the answers, so much still needs to be uncovered about our own back yard.

Here, we dive into 6 of the most intriguing mysteries of our solar system: http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/mysteries-of-our-solar-system/

Image Source (before editing): http://ow.ly/qTZ1v

The Search for Dark Matter: The Preliminary Results of the LUX Dark Matter Detector

Dark matter: it is a difficult and troubling concept for many who try to understand it. After all, how can something that is so crucial to our existence exist, yet we cannot see it? Well, as a crude analogy, the very air we breathe fits into this same category. We cannot see air, but no one here is disputing the premise that air exists. Of course, this is because we can prove that air is there; however, we were unable to really see or define it for years--for centuries. In fact, we didn"t even discover oxygen (the third most abundant element in the universe that makes up nearly 21% of the earth"s atmosphere) until the 1770s. In a similar way (but using a very different approach than the one used to define air), we have started to get verification for dark matter through the scientific method.

According to our model of cosmology, dark matter is thought to make up 26.8% of the total energy density of the observable universe. This is in stark contrast to regular matter, which comes in at just 4.9%. Subtracted from the total energy density of our homogeneous universe, dark matter would come in at a whopping 84.5% of the total matter of the universe, utterly dominating it. Thus, in order to truly understand the cosmos, we need to define and understand its existence.

To read about dark matter and our quest to understand it, see:
http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/the-search-for-dark-matter-the-preliminary-results-of-the-lux-dark-matter-detector/

Image source:
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/image/april-2012-dark-matter-underground-2