The Universe Is 13.772 Billion Years Old

Fact of the day: The universe is 13.772 billion years old, with an uncertainty of 59 million years.

Most people picture the Big Bang as a gigantic explosion filling a void. But this visual representation implies that the Big Bang happened in one place. The Big Bang actually happened everywhere. And it wasn't really a bang either. It wasn't an explosion, it was just a very rapid expansion. The rate of its expansion, taking account of its density, would have created a whine that constantly lowered its pitch as the universe expanded the sound waves. So it should really be called the 'The Big Whining Expansion', but that would never catch on.

The universe started with a catastrophic annihilation of all the matter and antimatter that came into contact, producing a colossal amount of energy. As it cooled, quarks and electrons formed, and then protons and neutrons, and then atoms, and then finally molecules of hydrogen and helium (with traces of lithium and beryllium).

Around 378,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe was filled with opaque hydrogen plasma. This then cooled to form neutral hydrogen atoms, which could not absorb the thermal radiation, and photons were now free to move around. The universe became transparent, and a crucial piece of evidence that supported this theory was created, Cosmic Microwave Background.

But how do we know that the Big Bang occurred?


Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB (above). If this image does not load, I have CMB as the website home screen background, or just search CMB into google.

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