What Created Creation?
The Cosmos
Where is the universe from? Where is it going? How is it put together? How did it
get to be this way.
These are Big questions. Very easy to ask but almost impossible to answer. We want
answers for philosophical reason having nothing to do with science. No one will get rich
from discovering the structure of the universe unless they right a book about it.
The area of science dealing with Big questions is called cosmology. The reason for
it's study is found in the fact that:
The universe was born at a specific time in the past and has expanded ever since.
The Expansion of the Universe
Edwin Hubble established the existence of other galaxies. He noted that the light
from these galaxies was shifted toward the red. That is it's wavelength was longer than
that of the light emitted from the corresponding atoms in the lab. Furthermore he found
that the farther away the galaxy was the more it was shifted toward the red end of the
spectrum. Hubble attributed this shift to the doppler effect.
Hubble saw this and concluded that all galaxies are rushing away from us and the
universe is expanding as a whole. Modern equipment has observed and verified this
so-called Hubble expansion exists throughout the observable universe.
This shows three important things. First there is no significance to the fact that
earth seems to be the center of the universal expansion. In any galaxy it would look as
if you were standing still and all others were rushing away from you. Second the
movement of the universe is not like an explosion. Galaxies are not moved through the
universe but expand with the universe. Third the galaxies themselves do not expand only
the space between them.
Finally if you ask where the expansion started the only answer is everywhere. In the
words of the fifteenth-century philosopher Nicholas of Cusa, "the universe has its center
everywhere and its edge nowhere."
This theory has one fact that is inescapable. The universe was not always there but
did have an beginning. This has come to be known as the Big-Bang theory.
Universal Freezing
When the universe was younger it was smaller. When matter and energy are compacted
the temperature inevitably rises. Thus when the universe was younger it was hotter. We
can see six crucial events called "freezing's" where the fabric of the universe changed
in a fundamental way.
The most recent occurred when the universe was about 500,000 years old, about
14,999,500,000 years ago. After 500,000 years permanent atoms started to form. Before
500,000 years matter existed as loose electrons and nuclei in a state called plasma.
Moving back in time the next freezing occurred at about three minutes. This was when
nuclei first started to form. Before this only elementary particles existed in the
universe.
From about three minutes to ten-millionths of a second the universe was a seething
mass of elementary particles- protons, neutrons, electrons and the rest of the particle
zoo.
Now there are four distinct forces in the universe the strong, electromagnetic, the
weak, and gravitational. Before they must have all been one before the first
ten-millionth of a second. The timetable of these forces as theorized today is:
(10 to the -10th power) second: the weak and electromagnetic forces form into one
called electroweak.
(10 to the -33rd power) second: the strong force joins the electroweak leaving only
gravity.
(10 to the -43rd power) second: known as the plank time for one of the founders of
quantum mechanics. Before this time the universe and all forces were completely unified
and as allinged as is possible.
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