The universe, with its vast and endless expanse, has always fascinated people across the ages. From the dawn of time, humans have strived to answer the greatest question of all – where did we come from, and what is our ultimate destiny? The quest to discover and comprehend the story of the universe is an adventure of the human mind, and thanks to the efforts of astronomers and cosmologists, it is a story that we are slowly but surely beginning to unveil.
In an exciting space expedition, a probe will one day dive into a tunnel in space and time, and we may have to take the risk of flying into a different universe to escape the inevitable death of our own. At the start of the millennium, we are on the brink of understanding the beginning and end of our universe. Cosmologists worldwide are working tirelessly to unlock the mysteries of everything we see around us, and one such expert is Bob Cashner.
Bob is on a scientific mission to measure whether there is enough gravity to hold the universe together. From what we’ve known, the universe has been coasting as it expanded since the Big Bang. However, scientists have been asking how much of the universe’s gravity has slowed down its expansion. Like driving a car up a hill, the expanding universe could slow down if no power is applied because gravity pulls back on you. Bob’s team has discovered a surprising answer – the universe is not only expanding, but it’s also accelerating!
Although time is said to be constant and dependable, it didn’t even exist before the birth of the universe. All we know is that 12 billion years ago, there was absolutely nothing – no matter, no space, no time. The universe surfaced from a tiny speck of energy that grew from nothing, and a violent blast of unimaginable heat resulted in The Big Bang – the start of our universe. The Big Bang is the key to understanding the universe, according to expert astronomer Martin Rees.
Through Einstein’s famous equation, e=mc2, we can understand that energy and mass are interchangeable. It allowed humanity to build weapons of mass destruction, but it also gave us the foundation to understand how our universe came into being. Starting from the size of an atom, the universe expanded at a frantic pace in the merest fraction of a second to the size of a grape. Known as ‘inflation’, the surge of internal energy propelled the universe to expand a hundred trillion trillion trillion trillion times!
However, the universe was not without conflict, and a battle of epic proportions ensued. Matter and antimatter, the archrivals, crashed into each other. When they met, they mutually destructed, releasing the most extensive burst of energy ever known to the universe, a process that could have resulted in the formation of nothing but heat and radiation without any stars or matter for the universe to form. But the universe was not entirely equal in its matter and antimatter, and the former managed to outstrip the latter, bringing the universe out of chaos and into order.
As we continue to unravel the mysteries of our universe, we discover that every atom, every molecule of our world, came from incredibly hot, dense matter. We come from stardust, from an explosion of energy and chaos where matter and energy collided and forged every one of us.
The discovery of The Big Bang is one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of our time, and even though it was an accident, its implications have far-reaching consequences. Therefore, we must continue to invest in the quest to understand our universe and work towards unlocking the secrets of its creation, for it is in the mysteries of the universe that we discover the deepest truths of our existence.
