26 Pictures Will Make You Re-Evaluate Your Entire Existence. In Defense of the Big Bang. An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents....What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning. Max Planck, 1936 What, you might ask, could possibly induce a rational astrophysicist to believe that all the matter, energy, and space of the universe began fifteen billion years ago in a primeval fireball packed into a volume smaller than a marble that has been expanding ever since? The answer is simple: regardless of what you may have read or heard, the big bang is supported by a preponderance of evidence and has become the most successful theory ever put forth for the origin and evolution of the universe.
Scientific evidence in support of a theory sometimes takes you places where your senses have never been. Of all the theories about how the physical world works, the general public seems to be most intrigued by the big bang. What Happened Before the Beginning? Every cosmologist and astronomer agrees: our Universe is 13.7 billion years old. Using cutting-edge technology, scientists are now able to take a snapshot of the Universe a mere heartbeat after its birth.
Armed with hypersensitive satellites, astronomers look back in time to the very moment of creation, when all the matter in the Universe exploded into existence. It is here that we uncover an unsolved mystery as old as time itself - if the Universe was born, where did it come from? Meet the leading scientists who have now discovered what they believe to be the origin of our Universe, and a window into the time before time. The big bang theory holds that the entire universe was once packed tightly into an unimaginably dense and tiny space, known as a "singularity. " That is, until roughly 13.7 billion years ago, when a colossal burst of energy and pressure started to give rise to entire worlds, galaxies and interstellar particles, forming the universe as we know it today. The Scale Of The Universe (INTERACTIVE)
Planet with four suns discovered by volunteers. 15 October 2012Last updated at 11:33 ET By Paul Rincon Science editor, BBC News website The new planet - a gas giant - is about six times the size of Earth Astronomers have found a planet whose skies are illuminated by four different suns - the first known of its type. The distant world orbits one pair of stars which have a second stellar pair revolving around them. The discovery was made by volunteers using the Planethunters.org website along with a team from UK and US institutes; follow-up observations were made with the Keck Observatory. A report on the Arxiv server has been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote Computerised attempts to find things [in the data] missed this system entirely.
End QuoteDr Chris LintottOxford University The planet, located just under 5,000 light-years away, has been named PH1 after the Planet Hunters site. It is thought to be a "gas giant" slightly larger than Neptune - more than six times the radius of the Earth. Seven Ages Of Starlight.
The Solar System. The Religious Debate.