The Science Blog Of Nick

Fact of the day: The Grand Unified Theory was proposed in 1974. Before  10 -43  seconds into the life of the universe, the current laws of physics did not apply. There is a theory (that has been partially proven) that the four fundamental forces, the electromagnetic force, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and gravity, combined into one super force. The Grand Unified Theory (GUT) states that the electromagnetic force, and the weak and strong nuclear forces combined just after the Big Bang. A theory that includes gravity as well is called a Theory Of Everything (TOE), as it would explain everything, but finding a TOE that is easy to prove is incredibly hard, as gravity is very different from the other forces, as it does not have a boson that is proven to exist. String Theory is a not yet definitive theory, but could certainly be a contender for a TOE. The GUT theory has only been partially proven, as at extremely high energies (like that just after the Bi...

Fact of the day: Just after the big bang the universe was very hot, over 1,000,000,000,000,000ºC. The very early universe was very extreme, in pretty much every way. It was extremely dense, as the entire mass and energy of a universe was present in a space smaller than a proton. It was extremely hot, as the energy produced by the annihilation matter and antimatter was cataclysmic. It was so extreme that even the current laws of physics did not apply (more information about this will be in my next few posts). The current laws of physics did not apply until plank time or  10 -43  seconds (the smallest measurement of time) after the Big Bang. The theory is that the universe was a singularity, plank length (the smallest measurement of length) wide, and plank temperature (a very high temperature). There is even a theory that the four fundamental forces combined to make one mega super force. Within  10 –32  seconds, the universe was the size of a grapefruit, and...

Fact Of The Day: In one cubic centimetre there around 300 photons (bosons for the electromagnetic force) that were created in the big bang. Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation is a very hard to detect, 13.7 billion year old source of radiation and, as I said in my previous post, is a crucial piece of evidence that the Big Bang occurred. This tells us that the Big Bang occurred because CMB was formed when the universe was extremely hot, and it comes from every direction. Another piece of evidence is that the universe is expanding. As it is expanding, there must have been a place in time that it was infinitely small. We know that the universe is expanding because of something called redshift. We can see (through a telescope) that some of the farthest galaxies that we can see are all red, or redshifted. This light has been travelling towards us for over 13 billion years, and because of the expansion of the universe, these light waves have been stretched by the expansion o...

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). A...