by Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question that you want to answer an expert, send it to curiouskidsus@thevversation.com.
How could a big bang have been the start of the universe, because intense explosions destroy everything? – Tristan S., 8 years old, Newark, Delaware
Pretend you are a perfectly flat chess piece in a game of chess on a perfect flat and giant chessboard. One day you look around and ask: how did I come here? How did the chessboard come here? How did it all start? You take out your telescope and start to explore your universe, the chessboard….
What do you think? Your universe, the chessboard, is getting bigger. And in more time, even bigger! The board is spreading in all directions that you can see. There is nothing that seems to cause this expansion as far as you can see – it just seems to be the nature of the chessboard.
But wait a minute. If it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, that means in the past, it must have been smaller and smaller. At one point, long, long ago, in the beginning, it must have been so small that it was infinitely small.
Let’s work ahead of what happened then. At the start of your universe, the chessboard was infinitely small and then extensive, larger and larger until the day you decided to make some observations about the nature of your chess universe. All things in the universe – the small particles that are part of you and everything else – started very close together and then spread further as time progressed.
Our universe works exactly in the same way. When astronomers such as I make observations from distant galaxies, we see that they all separate. It seems that our universe has started very small and has since been expanded. Scientists now even know that the universe not only grows, but also the speed with which it expands. This mysterious effect is caused by something that physicists call dark energy, although we know very little else about it.
Astronomers also observe something that is called the cosmic microwave background radiation. It is a very low level of energy that exists everywhere in space. We know from those measurements that our universe is 13.8 billion years old – way, much older than people, and about three times older than the earth.
When astronomers look back all the way back to the event that our universe has started, we call it the big bang.
Many people hear the name “Big Bang” and think of a huge explosion of things, such as a bomb that ends. But the big bang was not an explosion that destroyed things. It was the start of our universe, the start of both space and time. Instead of an explosion, it was a very fast expansion, the event that the universe began to get bigger and bigger.
This expansion is different from an explosion, which can be caused by things like chemical reactions or major effects. Explosions result in energy that goes from one place to another, and usually much of it. Instead, the energy moved together with the space during the big bang while it was spreading, wild moving but more and more spread in time since space grew over time.
Back in the Chesseboard universe, the “Big Bang” would be like the start of everything. It is the beginning of the board that gets bigger.
It is important to realize that “for” the big bang, there was no room and there was no time. Returning to the analogy of the chessboard, you can count the amount of time on the game clock after the start, but there is no playing time before the start – the clock was not active. And before the game had started, the chessboard universe did not exist and there was no chessboard space. You have to be careful if you say ‘before’ in this context, because time did not even exist until the Big Bang.
You have also focused your mind for the idea that the universe does not expand anything, because the Big scared as far as we know was the start of both space and time. Confusing, I know!
Astronomers are not sure what the big bang has caused. We just look at observations and see that the universe has begun. We know that it was extremely small and bigger, and we know that this was a deviated 13.8 billion years ago.
What started our own chess game? That is one of the deepest questions that someone can ask.
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This article is re -published of the conversation, a non -profit, independent news organization that gives you facts and reliable analysis to help you understand our complex world. It is written by: Michael Lam, Rochester Institute of Technology
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Michael Lam does not work for, consults, possesses shares or receives financing from a company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has not announced relevant ties with their academic appointment.
