Jeffrey McKaig

College Essay
Look up. Stop for a moment and look up at the planets,
stars, galaxies, nebulae, comets and asteroids that are moving
right by us at thousands of miles per hour. The beauty of it all
is so enthralling that I am sometimes overwhelmed by it all.
Balls of super-heated plasma in a constant tug of war with its
own gravity to keep its shape and galaxies made of billions of
stars rotating around supermassive black holes are all up there
in the sky for us to see. Every day I am thinking about these
things, and every time I do one serious question pops into my
mind. How did it all get there? And more importantly, why?
Of course, this question cannot be answered without
mathematics or physics for we cannot simply see what happened
because it is in the past so we must use conjectures of modern
physics and observations of the universe we have today. For
example: an expanding universe implies it was once very small,
the cosmic microwave back ground radiation is an afterglow of the
big bang which is the current theory of how the universe came
into being. But no one knows how the big bang banged. I am in a
relativity early stage of my learning of my math and physics
subjects but I understand the importance of strong basics. When I
am in my math class or physics class I am viewing each problem I
do as a step closer to becoming a master in these subjects and

Jeffrey McKaig

subsequently being able to attempt to answer the question I posed

earlier.
Growing up with mathematics professors for parents I was
always taught to always prove the things you say or make sure
other people can prove the things they say. In math every theorem
and equation can be proved and they can be applied to almost all
parts of our lives. For example all objects in a gravitational
2
field follow the path created by the equation y=x . Or to the

springs above a cars tires, their compression and rarefaction

rate can be modeled by some form of the equations

y=sin x

or

y=cos x . And these equations can be applied all over our

universe do describe, predict the future, or figure out the past

of our universe. Because of this I know that we can figure out
the cause of the big bang using advanced mathematics or maybe
even new mathematics that could be developed by a bright young
mind.
The study of the origin of this universe is called
Cosmology. And Cosmologists are working on this problem right now
and running into some serious problems. Mostly because the math
of quantum physics and relativity do not mix so well. I dream of
being able to join the ranks of cosmologists like Steven Hawking

Jeffrey McKaig

and Kip Thorne and help them and give my insights on this problem
that is important to all of us.