Garcia, Ruffa G.

BSBA MA 2-1
There are many misconceptions surrounding the Big Bang theory. For example, we tend
to imagine a giant explosion. Experts however say that there was no explosion but there
was (and continues to be) an expansion. Rather than imagining a balloon popping and
releasing its contents, imagine a balloon expanding: small balloon expanding to the size
of our current universe.
The universe was born with the Big Bang as an unimaginably hot, dense point. When
the universe was just 10-34 of a second or so old that is, a hundredth of a billionth of a
trillionth of a trillionth of a second in age it experienced an incredible burst of
expansion known as inflation, in which space itself expanded faster than the speed of
light. During this period, the universe doubled in size at least 90 times, going from
subatomic-sized to golf-ball-sized almost instantaneously.
According to NASA, after inflation the growth of the universe continued, but at a slower
rate. As space expanded, the universe cooled and matter formed. One second after
the Big Bang, the universe was filled with neutrons, protons, electrons, anti-electrons,
photons and neutrinos. During the first three minutes of the universe, the light elements
were born during a process known as Big Bang nucleosynthesis.
For the first 380,000 years or so, the universe was essentially too hot for light to shine,
according to France's National Center of Space Research (Centre National dEtudes
Spatiales, or CNES). The heat of creation smashed atoms together with enough force to
break them up into a dense plasma, an opaque soup of protons, neutrons and
electrons that scattered light like fog.
380,000 years after the Big Bang, matter cooled enough for atoms to form during the
era of recombination, resulting in a transparent, electrically neutral gas, according to
NASA. This set loose the initial flash of light created during the Big Bang, which is
detectable today as cosmic microwave background radiation. However, after this point,

the universe was plunged into darkness, since no stars or any other bright objects had
formed yet.
About 400 million years after the Big Bang, the universe began to emerge from
the cosmic dark ages during the epoch of reionization. During this time, which
lasted more than a half-billion years, clumps of gas collapsed enough to form the first
stars and galaxies, whose energetic ultraviolet light ionized and destroyed most of the
neutral hydrogen.
Although the expansion of the universe gradually slowed down as the matter in the
universe pulled on itself via gravity, about 5 or 6 billion years after the Big Bang,
according to NASA, a mysterious force now called dark energy began speeding up the
expansion of the universe again, a phenomenon that continues today. A little after 9
billion years after the Big Bang, our solar system was born.
The universe is currently estimated at roughly 13.8 billion years old, give or take 130
million years. In comparison, the solar system is only about 4.6 billion years old. This
estimate came from measuring the composition of matter and energy density in the
universe. This allowed researchers to compute how fast the universe expanded in the
past. With that knowledge, they could turn the clock back and extrapolate when the Big
Bang happened. The time between then and now is the age of the universe.
REFFERENCES:
Choi, C. Q. (2015, january 13). Our Expanding Universe: Age, History & Other Facts.
Retrieved from space.com: http://www.space.com/52-the-expanding-universe-from-thebig-bang-to-today.html
The Big bang. (2015, 03 15). Retrieved from National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA): http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/whatpowered-the-big-bang/
The big bang theory - an overview. (2015, 03 15). Retrieved from Bigbangtheory.com:
http://www.big-bang-theory.com/

The Origin of the universe. (2015, 03 15). Retrieved from astronomy.pomona.edu:

http://www.astronomy.pomona.edu/Projects/moderncosmo/Josh's
%20Bigbang.html