Dark Cobra said:
I am uneducated in this field.
Also, A question I have:
Creationists maintain that something had to createor cause matter/start creation/etc. Ignore the fact that their own beliefs are hypocrisy... but, is that false?
Awright, lemme' have a shot at it.
The universe, that is all the "stuff" we can see and touch, all the energy, all the "space" (that is, the actual dimensions themselves) and some other things (called "dark matter" and "dark energy" because we can't directly sense them) all originated from a single point, what is called a singularity. A single "dot" like the points we learned about in high school geometry, with EVERYTHING all scrunched up inside it.
No, we don't know where it came from, but some theories are that it may have been from a kind of extra-dimensional "hyperspace" that exists outside of our universe, like our universe is an expanding bubble inside some sort of cosmic glass of beer. That's my favorite way to look at it, we're all part of a bubble floating in beer, heading for the foam. I just hope it's a GOOD beer!
Anyway, as soon as that dot/point formed, the "universe" began to exist. Time started (no, it didn't exist "before" this, time is just another dimension, like the space ones, try not to think of some sort of time running in the background -- this isn't like a movie). OK, so we have the hot dot and then, according to the best theories, we entered an "inflationary" phase. This means that the dot swelled up VERY fast, faster than light speed (if light had existed then, but things were still to hot and dense for light). In an extremely small fraction of a second the universe went from this point to very, very, big. I don't know how big, but BIG, like light years in size (I think), but it took 10e-25 seconds to get there. That's a decimal with twenty-five zeros after it, then a one. A very small moment in time.
Then things slowed down and we get to the "regular" expansion which we are still in. The inflated ball grew larger and cooler (remember though, there is nothing "outside" this "ball," it really is the only thing around (except maybe the surrounding beer, but nothing IN the ball can get TO the beer, too bad for all of us). As far as the ball is concerned it could "sense" that it may be getting larger but it can't tell anything about the "outside" world.
After expanding this way for awhile, different "stuff" condenses out of the soup as it cools. At ~380,000 years of age atoms and light can form, and suddenly the entire ball is full of gamma radiation, light and heat. It is VERY hot (I don't know how hot, I don't have the book handy, but you get the idea).
It keeps expanding and cooling, and stars, galaxies, quasars and other things we know and see form from gravity. The original inflationary time set up the "structure" and distribution of the stuff that would form atoms to make this possible. As it continued to expand and cool the original gamma radiation got "stretched" from red shift and became the cosmic background radiation we now detect. In fact, the original ball has cooled generally to less than three degrees above absolute zero, with the exception of the hot spots in and near stars, planets, and the other members of the cosmic zoo. But overall the universe has become pretty cold.
That "dark matter" and "dark energy" are invisible to us but seem to be real. The dark matter is detected by its gravitational pull and seems to make up a lot of what holds galaxies together. Calculations show that most of them would've flew apart if this dark matter hadn't been there all along (and seems to still be there) to increase their gravitational pull. That, and all the visible regular matter, have also been slowing the outward motion of the matter in the universe, and was once thought to POSSIBLY be enough to cause it to eventually stop flying apart and drag it back in to an eventual "big crunch," the opposite of a big bang.
That won't happen, though, because of that "dark energy." This is a force that seems to cause everything to REPEL everything else, in direct opposition to gravity. It seems to be undetectable at relatively close distances (like between nearby galaxies), but becomes more significant as distances increase. It is only relatively recently (like the last few billion years) that a good deal of the universe has become far enough from some of the other parts that it has become significant.
The net result of that dark energy is that the expansion will continue, but also accelerate with time. We'll never have a big crunch, so we may end with a whimper, not a bang, after all.
Sorry this ran long, but you did ask about the origin of the universe!
