Theories of the Universe
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Before we can speculate on the fate of the universe, we must first look back to how it began. The modern version of the 'Big Bang' theory is that a massive explosion created all the mass and energy in the universe, and also the fabric of time-space, which inflated rapidly after the big bang but then slowed down and the universe cooled down (Seife, 2237). The temperature dropped within minutes, and free-roaming quarks formed protons and neutrons, some of which coalesced into the nuclei of simple elements. When electrons tried to coalesce with nuclei, they would be forced away by flying photons, but these were quickly bounded off other atoms trying to form. Because of all these flying particles, light stayed trapped in a kind of plasma around all these atoms for roughly 300,000 years after the big bang. Finally, everything cooled off enough because of the expansion of the universe for electrons to combine with nuclei, and light was freed, causing the entire universe to glow. In the mid-1960s, scientists discovered a cosmic microwave background, and in 1965 two scientists from Bell Telephone laboratories, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, earned the Nobel Prize for discovering that stubborn static in their microwave antennae was the afterglow of the big bang (Seife 2237). This gave credence to the 'Big Bang theory, since if it had taken place, microwave radiation from the explosion should still be detectable. The discovery by Penzias and Wilson put to rest the competing
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force just as quarks do but because they were thought to have no mass, they were not considered important. In the late 1990s, the Super-KamioKande observatory in Kamioka, Japan, found hints that muon neutrinos could change into tau neutrinos, suggesting their flavor basis differs form their mass basis, and therefore they must have mass. Physicists have assumed that any experiments done with matter will give the same corresponding results when done with anti-matter. This is known as charge-parity (CP) or symmetry. However, the weak fore does not obey this law, and it is possible neutrinos do not either. They may turn out to have their own anti-particles: physicists are looking for signs that neutrinos are indeed Majorana (have their own anti-particles). This is all part of the ongoing exploration of how the universe is put together, and what holds it together.
Scientists reported in 1997 that by tracking exploding stars billions of light years away they could come to a preliminary verdict that the universe may be doomed to expand forever (Glanz 799). Data from the Hubble Space telescope and from ground-based observatories was used to analyze light from these distant stars to estimate their distances and determine how fa
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Approximate Word count = 2650
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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