LMR-040 · Cosmology
Big Bang
Not an explosion in space. An expansion of space.
§ A first look
§ Depths
Six ways into the same idea — from bedtime story to chalkboard. No order required.
L1 · Crayon
Told like a bedtime story.
For a curious 10-year-old. No jargon. Just a picture in your head.
Imagine watching a movie of the universe and pressing rewind. Galaxies get closer. The universe gets smaller, hotter, denser. Press rewind for about 14 billion years and everything you can see was packed into something unimaginably tiny and unimaginably hot. Then press play: that tiny hot thing started expanding, cooled down, sorted itself into atoms, then stars, then galaxies, then weirdly enough you. The Big Bang isn't a bomb going off in empty space. It's the moment space itself started getting bigger. The name is bad. We know. We've talked about it.
§ Strange but true
- 01It wasn't an explosion in space. It was an explosion of space — everywhere, at once.
- 02Static between TV channels used to be partly the afterglow of the Big Bang hitting your antenna.
- 03The whole observable universe was once smaller than a grapefruit, hotter than a star, and only a fraction of a second old.
§ From the field journal
Big Bang
"Not an explosion in space. An expansion of space."
— observed, sketched, not yet fully understood.
§ Nearby
Constellations near Big Bang
→
CMB
The afterglow of the Big Bang, still arriving 13.8 billion years later.
→
Inflation
In 10⁻³² seconds, the universe grew by a factor of 10²⁶.
→
Redshift
The universe is stretching, and dragging every wavelength of light with it.
→
Dark Energy
Something is pushing space apart faster, and we have no idea what.
→
Multiverse
Maybe ours is one bubble in a foam of universes.
→
Entropy
The reason your room gets messier on its own.