A Return to the

Beginning
At the end of this session…
1. Describe the important eras in the history of the universe;
2. Explain the important cosmological observations;
3. Interpret how scientists are able to characterize the Universe;
4. Define the principles and equations that are the foundation of
models of the universe;
5. Define the principles and equations that are the foundation of
models of the universe;
6. Describe the basic observational facts of the structure and
evolution of the Universe;
7. Define the history of the universe after the Big Bang: inflationary
phase, dark matter dominated universe, recombination, and the
formation of cosmic microwave background radiation.
Things to ponder…

So why do we need to return to

the beginning or to the origin? Or
to discover the origin of time and
space and all that it contains?
What is the universe made of?
How will it change in the future?
What do we know of our universe
today?
 Prehistoric and Ancient Astronomy
• developed a model of the
universe in which a flat
Earth was covered by a
solid dome

Ancient Egyptian view of the cosmos (Britannica, 2020)

• the positions of stars

to assist in navigation,
and some of these
observations were of
an astrological nature
(a) Chichen Itza, Mexico (Anonymous, Present5), (b) Giza Pyramids, Egypt (Plait, 2012).
Ancient Greeks
• believed that the
Earth is the center of
the universe.

Aristotle (384-322 BC) (Mambrol, 2019)

• divided the universe into

terrestrial spheres, which were
corruptible and where humans
lived, and the celestial spheres
in which the planets and stars
revolve around the earth
Aristotle's Geocentric Universe (Barseghyan, 2015)
 Ancient Greeks
• Deduced that the Earth and Moon are
spherical
• that the Sun is much farther from the Earth
than the Moon is,
• and that the distance from the Earth to the
stars is much greater than the Earth’s
diameter
Claudius Ptolemy (160-127 BC) (CK-12, 2014)

Ptolemaic System (Anonymous, Encyclopedia Britannica) Earth-centered Cosmology: Claudius Ptolemy, 100-170 AD (Creighton)
Nicholas Copernicus (1473 - 1543 AD)
• revolutionized the study of the
universe by proposing a
heliocentric model
• replace the Earth-centered
two-sphere model
(Kowalczyk, 2019)

• revolution of heavenly bodies

where the Sun is stationary
• earth and the five known
planets moved in circular orbits
around the Sun.
Heliocentric model (Copernici & Scewing, 1541)
Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642)

• Father of Astronomy
• use a telescope to study the
heavens
• provided the observational proof of
the Copernican heliocentric model

(Nix, 2018)

Galilean Satellites (Byrd, 2017)

 Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

✓Gravity
✓Light thru prism
✓Telescope
✓Newton’s apple

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA

✓Distance from moon - tide

reflecting telescope

Netwon's observation of the spectrum of light (Nassau, 2020)

Reflector telescope (Kellermann & Klock, 2020)
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

✓Law of Universal Gravitation

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA

Sun and planets could be explained from

the law of universal gravitation

Newton's Law of Gravitation (Barseghyan, 2015)

 Sir William Herschel (1738 - 1822)
✓discovered the planet Uranus in
1781
✓studied the structure of the Milky
Way
✓first to propose a model of the
galaxy
(Tietz, 2019)

a) The Milky Way Galaxy

b) “island universes” Sun

Herschel's Map of our Galaxy (Eugster, 2017)

a nebulae which consist of

stars of what we call galaxies
today
Sir William and Margaret Huggins

✓apply spectrum analysis to

astronomy
✓showed that stars are composed
of the same elements on the
(Hackmann, 1986) (Anonymous, Ireland’s Sun and Earth
Greatest Woman Inventor finalist, 2013)
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

✓theories of relativity that can be

considered as the birth of
modern cosmology

a) Special Relativity (1905)

(NobelPrize.org, 2020)
➢ E=mc^2
b) General Relativity (1915)-
describes that the greater is the
mass, the greater is the curvature
of space
Georges Lemaitre (1894-1966)

✓“Father” of the Big Bang

✓applied the equations of Einstein to
cosmological considerations

(O'Connor & Robertson, 2008) Edwin Hubble (1889-1953)

✓discovered “Andromeda Galaxy”

✓Andromeda 900, 000 lightyears away
from the Earth
✓expanding universe – Big bang

https://cdn.britannica.com/60/198560-050-
11888CDF/Edwin-Hubble-1931.jpg
Sir Fred Hoyle (1915-2001)

✓proposed the steady-state model

matter is continuously created to

form new stars and galaxies to
maintain a constant density
https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/cmt/wp-
content/uploads/2011/02/Fred-Hoyle.jpg

✓accidentally coined the term “Big Bang”

Evidence of Expanding Universe

What if we trace the expansion

backward in time? What would
we expect? Would we reach a
“beginning?” Is there a
beginning?
The Big Bang Theory
Big Bang
expansion and evolution
of the universe from an
initially hot and dense
state to its current
relatively cool and
tenuous state, and still
expanding until today
Big Bang Theory (Sutter, 2020)
Theories of EXPANDING UNIVERSE
Big Bang

a) Einstein’s General Relativity (1915)

b) Fr. Georges Lemaître (1927)
c) Einstein’s Cosmological Constant (1917)
Expansion of the Universe
Hubble Law
Big Bang

Cosmological Redshift (Anonymous, The Science behind the SpaceAusScope, n.d.)

the farther away a galaxy was, the more its

spectrum appeared shifted into the red.

𝑣 = 𝐻0 𝑑
Expansion of the Universe
Hubble Law
Big Bang
cosmological principle

the Universe is
homogeneous and
isotropic on very large
scales

Representation of the universe expansion (Sherman, 2015)

Evolution of the Universe

What is the universe like?

Was there a beginning to
time? How do we fit into
the cosmos?
The Big Bang

a moment in time
and not a point in
space (t=0)

The Big Bang (Hossenfelder, 2017)

Cosmic Microwave Background

✓ first to support the idea of a “Hot Big

Bang
✓ from his calculations, there should be a
leftover remnant of that initial radiation

George Gamow (1904-1968)

(Wikipedia, n.d.) Gamow (1948)
Cosmic Microwave Background
✓ accidentally made one of the greatest
discoveries in cosmology
✓ awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize

Penzias and Wilson (1965)

(Ressmeyer, n.d.)

Big Bang Theory

placed on firm
footing in all other
theories to rest

Map of the Cosmic Microwave Background (Merali, 2017)

Age of the Universe –
How long the universe has been expanding?

expansion time is
equivalent to the age
of the universe
Expanding Universe (Vanstone, 2012)

1
𝑇= 13.8 billion years
𝐻0
Seeing into the Past
Light
✓is an electromagnetic
wave
✓travels through space at a
Electromagnetic Spectrum (Raghunath, 2019)
speed of 186,000 miles
per second - Lightyear

Seeing into the Past

Structure Formation
a. Gravitational Instability
- architect of the universe

b. Density Fluctuations in the very early Universe

- provide the “Seeds” from which all structure in the
universe developed

c. Hierarchical Structure Formation

- small structures collapse and merge to give rise to
larger structures
Dark Matter

▪ accounts for 85% of all the matter in

the universe.
▪ form first in the early universe.
▪ provides the “framework” onto
which ordinary matter collapses to
form stars and galaxies.
▪ overwhelming gravitational
evidence to infer its existence.
Dark matter (Irving, 2020)
Cosmic Inflation

▪ Flatness Problem – does not explain

why the space-time is so flat.

▪ Smoothness Problem – the heat map

of the cosmic horizon has an
explicable smoothness.
Cosmic Inflation
✓ proposed the idea of cosmic inflation or
inflation theory

▪ offers solutions to the Big

Bang theory problems
▪ explains why the universe is
full of stars and planets

Alan Guth (1947 - ) (Anonymous, 2014 KAVLI

PRIZE LAUREATES IN ASTROPHYSICS, 2014)
Dark Energy and the Accelerating
Universe
UNIVERSE’ rate of expansion is
accelerating, not slowing down

dark energy

makes up
approximately 70%
of our universe
Timeline of the Universe
13.8 billion years

Universe expand – BIG BANG

380,000 years after BB

INFLATION

Cosmic Microwave
Background

Dark ages
Timeline of the evolution of the universe (Tate, The History & Structure 200 million years after BB
of the Universe (Infographic), 2011)

First STARS
1 billion years after BB

2nd & 3rd generation stars and

planetary system
4.5 billion years after BB

Dark energy - ACCELERATING

UNIVERSE
References:
Please refer to the list of references on your printed learning guides and cross-posted at VSUEE where this
presentation is based.
THANK YOU for your
attendance!