Big Bang

is through testing that science progresses.

Quantum physics is the most successful and utterly bizarre theory in the whole of physics. As Niels Bohr, one of the founders of quantum physics, famously said: ‘Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.’

This harks back to the anthropic principle mentioned in Chapter 5, which Fred Hoyle exploited to work out how carbon is created within stars. The anthropic principle states that any cosmological theory must take into account the fact that the universe has evolved to contain us. It implies that this should be a significant element in cosmological research.

They also calculated that the universe is 23% dark matter, 73% dark energy and 4% ordinary matter. Furthermore, the size of the variations is compatible with what astronomers would expect to see if there was an inflationary phase in the early universe.

The WMAP team estimated that the universe is 13.7 billion years old, to within an error of just 0.2 billion years.

Some candidates for dark matter are so-called massive compact halo objects (MACHOs), a category which includes black holes, asteroids and giant Jupiter-like planets

The fable explains how a Persian vizier once asked his sultan if he could be paid in grains of rice, such that there was 1 grain on the first square of a chessboard, then 2 on the second square, then 4, 8,16, and so on. The sultan agreed, thinking that the final amount of rice would be trifling, but in fact he was bankrupted because the final square of the chessboard contained 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 grains. The combined total for all the squares would have been almost twice this number, which far outstrips today’s worldwide annual production of rice.

The Independent’s diagram neatly sums up our current understanding of the Big Bang universe. First, as it points out, ‘all matter and energy were condensed to a point’ and then there was an almighty Big Bang. The term ‘Big Bang’ implies some sort of explosion, which is not a wholly inappropriate analogy, except that the Big Bang was not an explosion in space, but an explosion of space. Similarly, the Big Bang was not an explosion in time, but an explosion of time. Both space and time were created at the moment of the Big Bang.

The observed proportions of light (e.g. hydrogen, helium) are very close to the Big Bang prediction by Gamow and colleagues; heavier atoms are produced in the stars

The challenge to the Big Bang model was clear—how could a universe created with a landscape of unparalleled blandness evolve into one populated by massive galaxies separated by vast empty voids?