BIG BANG
Many astronomers believe that the Universe began life in a single momentous event. This was an incredibly hot, dense explosion called the Big Bang, which took place about 15 billion years ago. During this explosion, all matter, energy, space – and time itself – were created.
In the first few millionths of a second, the particles that make up atoms, the building blocks of all matter, were formed. It took about 100,000 years for the first atoms, those of the gases hydrogen and helium, to come together. By this time, the searing heat of the Big Bang had cooled, space had expanded and the gases began to spread out. Gradually, however, gravity drew the gases together, leaving vast regions of empty space in between.
About a billion years after the Big Bang, the clouds of gas started to form into galaxies. Matter inside the galaxies went on clumping together until stars were created. Our own Sun was born in this way about 5 billion years ago. Its family of planets, including our Earth, was formed from the debris spinning round the infant Sun. With billions and billions of stars and planets forming in the same way across the Universe, it seems almost certain that life will have also evolved elsewhere. Will we on Earth one day make contact with these alien life-forms?
The expansion of the Universe is slowing down. Some astronomers think that gravity may eventually bring the expansion to a halt, then collapse all matter once more to a single point in a “Big Crunch”. Others believe that there is not enough material in the Universe to do this and that the Universe will carry on expanding forever.
Many scientists think that all matter in the Universe will eventually collide: the “Big Crunch”. Vast amounts of invisible “dark matter” in the Universe may exert sufficient gravity to halt its expansion and cause the galaxies to compress together.
Picture Credit : Google