The Big Bang is the theory (nah, not the TV series) which explains the origin of the universe and was propounded in the mid-twentieth century after the wide acceptance of Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
Our understanding of the laws of physics, like gravitation, Newton’s laws of motion, etc. pointed us in a direction that the universe as a whole must’ve had a beginning, at some point of time in the past. It was with this base and the ideas provided by the Relativity Theory that the Big Bang Theory got formulated.
It is well known by now, that the Big Bang Theory was not the first attempt to explain the working of the universe. Several attempts were made from ancient times till the present, with only a few of them successfully explaining the reality in a precise manner. The Big Bang Theory, being relatively accurate, has been accepted by the scientific community at large right now.
The famous Einsteinian equation, E = MC2, which explains the relationship between energy and mass, forms the base for this theory.
The Big Bang Theory goes as such; the universe as we see now had a beginning, around 13.5 billion years ago! To be more considerate to the value of time, the event occurred, 13,500,000,000 years ago (!), an incredibly long, long, long and long time ago! All the matter in the universe we see right now was then compressed into a tiny dot, as energy, which was said to be smaller than the size of a standard atom.
The energy dot was said to be in a very, very highly pressurised state and obviously, the temperature of the dot was unimaginably high. This dot of energy is right now named to be a singularity. The singularity then exploded, released the energy (and heat) and formed the concepts of time and space.
The question of how the singularity came about in the first place remains unanswerable, and religious authorities believe the creation of singularity to be the work of the God himself or herself (can’t anger the feminists)! It is also stated in the theory that time and space, as we know them now, were non-existent before the Big Bang event! Meaning, the space we see and the time we experience as the passage of events, were formed after the event! (Yeah, quite hard to imagine how it was like, before the Big Bang.)
Space and time are now collectively known as space-time or space-time continuum. It was established by Relativity Theory that time along with space formed a single fabric in reality that is under constant expansion (ever since the explosion). And all the matter in the universe are floating or hanging inside it! (We’ll get to time and Relativity Theory in later chapters).
By matter, we mean the subatomic particles and the various forms they have taken in the shape of atoms, molecules, compounds, rocks, gases, stars, planets, life forms, etc. And, the formation of particles immediately succeeded the Big Bang.
