Story and Origins of the Universe

As humans evolve and improve, we often attempt to understand life and how we tick. The answer lies in the stars, the galaxies and the origins of the universe.

The universe is consist of the smallest atoms to the biggest galaxies and everything in between. Even the very existence of space, time and life. It is essentially all things EVER. Hence the origin of the universe is the origin of everything.

Some people and religion believe that the start of the universe lies in the myth and stories of gods. Although we may have different interpretation on how life and the universe started, it is scientifically widely accepted that the universe began from the Big Bang.

The Big Bang theory states that the universe began as a hot and indefinitely dense point. With only a few millimeters wide, it is similar to a super charged black hole.

At around 13.7 billion years ago, this tiny singularity violently exploded and all matter, energy, space and time were created. Singularity in this context means a point of infinite density and gravity.

After the Big Bang came tow major stages: The Radiation Era and Matter Era. We will first dive into the substages of the Radiation Era.

The radiation era is the period from about 10−43 s (the Planck era) to 30000 years after the Big Bang. It is named for the dominance of radiation right after the big bang. The Era is separated in to eight epochs - Planck, Grand unified, Inflationary, Electroweak, Quark, Hadron, Lepton and Nuclear. Epoch means a moment in time from which nature or situations change to such a degree that it marks the beginning of a new era or age.

Planck Epoch is the first stage of this era. No matter existed in the universe at this time only energy and the ancestor to the four forces of nature, the superforce. The superforce include Gravity, Strong Nuclear, Weak and Electromagnetic. At the end ofthe Planck Era, a major event forced gravity away from the superforce.

The second stage is the Grand Unification Epoch, which mainly focus on the Strong Nuclear, Weak and Electromagnetic. During the grand unification epoch , physical characteristics such as mass, charge, flavour and colour charge were meaningless. The Grand Unification Epoch ended at approximately 10−36 seconds after the Big Bang. The end result being the strong nuclear broke away. The Strong Nuclear force refers to the 'felt' between nucleons (protons and neutrons) inside of the nucleus of an atom.

The third stage is the Inflationary Epoch where the universe expanded at an unprecedented rate. The universe from the size of an atom grew to the size of an orange. under the high temperature of 10^33 kelvin, it churned with electrons, quarks and other particles such as antiquarks.

The forth stage is the Electroweak Epoch. In this Epoch the temperature cools down a bit to the temperature of 10^10 Kelvin and the last two major forces, electromagnetic and weak, finally split off. To clarify, "Weak" is not an adjective but refers to the weak nuclear interaction, is responsible for particle decay.

The fifth stage is the Quark Epoch. All the raw materials and ingredients of creating the universe today is present and although it is already cooler than the previous stages with the temperature of 10^16 Kelvin, it is still too hot and dense for subatomic particles to form.

The sixth stage is the Hadron Epoch and this is where things get really interesting. With the average temperature of 10^10 kelvin, the universe cooled down enough for quarks to bind together. This combination formed protons and neutrons. Protons and Neutrons are important as it is the fundaments of atoms. Everything in the universe in made of atoms.

For the last two Epoch in the Radiation Era is the Lepton and Nuclear Epoch. In these two eras, the Protons and Neutrons fused and created Nuclei. This is significant because it in turned created the first chemical element - Helium.

Moving to the next era is the Matter Era. It began right after the Radiation Era around 3000 years after the big bang began. There is a transition to the Matter Era since there is a presence and predominance of matter in the universe. It consist of three major epochs - Atomic, Galactic and Stellar which span for billions of years. Including present day.

The first epoch of the Matter Era is the Atomic Epoch. During this period, the temperature is 3000 Kelvin, although extremely hot for today's standards, it is a significant cool down compared to the radiation era. It is also because of this cooling where combination occurred. Electron are attached to nuclei for the first time and created hydrogen, the second universal element only behind helium.

The second epoch is the Galactic Epoch. Since hydrogen atom is created during the Atomic Epoch, combined with helium, atomic clouds are formed. within these clouds, it's gravity forced the atoms to collect. Quasars and possibly massive stars formed during this period of time. Quasars are extremely bright active galactic nucleus, in which a supermassive black hole is surrounded by a gaseous accretion disk. These became the seeds of galaxies. Pretty cool stuff.

The last stage is the Stellar Epoch in which we are currently still in. Stars begin to form in these galaxies. The first stars and galaxies appeared within about 200 million years of the Big bang. The formation of stars continued had a ripple effect and shaped the universe. As big stars lived and died, they blew up and created new elements . With more and more new elements forming, new materials are formed such as dust, ice, rocks and minerals.

Through heat from the stars, helium and hydrogen are able to create the remaining elements. The continued forming of new materials and expansion of the universe. Our Sun and solar system appeared about 4.5 billion years ago. By 4 billion years ago, life emerged on Earth.

Information Taken from:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/origins-of-the-universe#:~:text=The%20best%2Dsupported%20theory%20of,by%20an%20ancient%20explosive%20force.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_early_universe#:~:text=The%20timeline%20of%20the%20early,a%20new%20era%20or%20age.

https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100400697?rskey=hJZ6GE&result=3#:~:text=The%20period%20from%20about%2010,all%20particles%20behave%20like%20radiation).

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/275628/what-happened-during-the-planck-era-of-the-big-bang

https://www.windows2universe.org/physical_science/physics/atom_particle/proton.html&edu=high

https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~ejchaisson/cosmic_evolution/docs/fr_1/fr_1_gal6.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasar

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdPzOWlLrbE 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hryoONc4Pgo