51. The Big Bang
Around 13.8 billion years ago, the universe was a different place. It was as tiny as a single matchbox, and outside it was nothing. Nothing at all. If you fast forward 100 million years from this time then you'll get to see the moment where everything changed for the universe forever, the big bang.
The big bang was an unusual event to happen. Everything that is now contained in the entire universe was the size of a matchbox. Within a trillionth of a second the universe had exploded and had already grown 1000 times bigger, the size of a car. Within the next trillionth of a second it had grown 1000 times bigger again, The size of a hotel! The universe's first step towards excitement and life.
At first when the universe exploded, it was very hot and condensed (as you might expect from something that just exploded). All the molecules were not spread out and they couldn't get outside the borders of the universe, so all their heat condensed inside the early universe. It reached more than 1000 trillion degrees! That's a good place to cook marshmallows.
When the universe was around 1 billion years old, huge clouds of dust and gas roamed around instead of stars. However, these clouds are exactly how stars form. Huge clouds of dust come together and their immense gravity compresses hydrogen together, fusing in to Helium, releasing enormous amounts of energy through nuclear fusion.
Some of the small stars could last trillions of years, but the big ones aren't so lucky. It is believed that some of the stars died out and since they were three times the size of our sun, they became black holes. All the other stars don't have as much mass as the black holes and begin to orbit them. these are probably how the galaxies formed.
As time went on, the rate of expansion slowed and slowed. The universe we live in today isn't 1000 trillion degrees celsius because now the universe is so big, the molecules have spread far enough that the heat is spread out across the now bulging universe. Sure, the universe is still expanding, but it isn't growing 1000 times bigger than what it was one trillionth of a second ago. Eventually, if scientists' predictions are right, the universe will stop growing completely and start going in the complete opposite way, growing smaller, and then start the whole thing again.
The brilliant deep space image captured by the James Webb telescope.
I hope you enjoyed reading about the big bang! To watch my video's on other space topics go to my youtube channel ,and to listen to my podcast go to spotify or apple podcast's and search up Give Me Space Henry Perraton.
Until next time, Give Me Space!
Henry