Cosmology (from the Greek , kosmos "world" and -, -logia "study of"), is the study of the origin, evolution,

and eventual
fate of the universe. Physical cosmology is the scholarly and scientific study of the origin, evolution, large-scale structures and
dynamics, andultimate fate of the universe, as well as the scientific laws that govern these realities.[1] Religious cosmology (or
mythological cosmology) is a body of beliefs based on the historical, mythological, religious, and esoteric literature and traditions
of creation and eschatology.
Physical cosmology is studied by scientists, such as astronomers, and theoretical physicists; and academic philosophers, such
asmetaphysicians, philosophers of physics, and philosophers of space and time. Modern cosmology is dominated by the Big
Bang theory, which attempts to bring together observational astronomy and particle physics.[2]
Although the word cosmology is recent (first used in 1730 in Christian Wolff's Cosmologia Generalis), the study of the universe has
a long history involving science, philosophy, esotericism and religion. Related studies include cosmogony, which focuses on the
origin of the Universe, and cosmography, which maps the features of the Universe. Cosmology is also connected to astronomy, but
while the former is concerned with the Universe as a whole, the latter deals with individual celestial objects.
Physical cosmology is the study of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the Universe and is concerned with fundamental
questions about its formation, evolution, and ultimate fate.[1] For most of human history, it was a branch
of metaphysics and religion. Cosmology as a scienceoriginated with the Copernican principle, which implies that celestial bodies
obey identical physical laws to those on Earth, and Newtonian mechanics, which first allowed us to understand those laws.
Physical cosmology, as it is now understood, began with the 20th century development of Albert Einstein's general theory of
relativity, and betterastronomical observations of extremely distant objects. These advances made it possible to speculate about
the origin of the Universe, and allowed the establishment of the Big Bang Theory, by Fr. Georges Lemaitre, as the leading
cosmological model. Some researchers still advocate a handful ofalternative cosmologies;[2] however, most cosmologists agree that
the Big Bang theory best explains observations.
Cosmology draws heavily on the work of many disparate areas of research in theoretical and applied physics. Areas relevant to
cosmology includeparticle physics experiments and theory, theoretical and observational astrophysics, general relativity, quantum
mechanics, and plasma physics.
General relativity, or the general theory of relativity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in
1916[1] and the current description of gravitation in modern physics. General relativity generalizes special relativity and Newton's law
of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time, or spacetime. In
particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the energy and momentum of whatever matter and radiation are present.
The relation is specified by the Einstein field equations, a system of partial differential equations.
Some predictions of general relativity differ significantly from those of classical physics, especially concerning the passage of time,
the geometry of space, the motion of bodies in free fall, and the propagation of light. Examples of such differences
include gravitational time dilation, gravitational lensing, the gravitational redshift of light, and the gravitational time delay. The
predictions of general relativity have been confirmed in all observations and experiments to date. Although general relativity is not
the only relativistic theory of gravity, it is the simplest theory that is consistent with experimental data. However, unanswered
questions remain, the most fundamental being how general relativity can be reconciled with the laws of quantum physics to produce
a complete and self-consistent theory of quantum gravity.
Einstein's theory has important astrophysical implications. For example, it implies the existence of black holesregions of space in
which space and time are distorted in such a way that nothing, not even light, can escapeas an end-state for massive stars. There
is ample evidence that the intense radiation emitted by certain kinds of astronomical objects is due to black holes; for
example, microquasars and active galactic nucleiresult from the presence of stellar black holes and black holes of a much more
massive type, respectively. The bending of light by gravity can lead to the phenomenon of gravitational lensing, in which multiple
images of the same distant astronomical object are visible in the sky. General relativity also predicts the existence of gravitational
waves, which have since been observed indirectly; a direct measurement is the aim of projects such as LIGO and NASA/ESA Laser
Interferometer Space Antenna and various pulsar timing arrays. In addition, general relativity is the basis of
current cosmological models of a consistently expanding universe.

The Bible was formed over many centuries, by many authors, and reflects shifting patterns of religious belief; consequently, its
concepts of cosmology are not always consistent.[1][2] Nor should the Biblical texts be taken to represent the beliefs of
all Jews or Christians at the time they were put into writing: the majority of those making up Hebrew Bible or Old Testament in
particular represent the beliefs of only a small segment of the ancient Israelite community, the members of a late Judean religious
tradition centered in Jerusalem and devoted to the exclusive worship ofYahweh.[3]
The universe of the ancient Israelites was made up of a flat disc-shaped earth floating on water, heaven above, underworld below.
[4]
Humans inhabited earth during life and the underworld after death, and the underworld was morally neutral; [5] only
in Hellenistic times (after c.330 BCE) did Jews begin to adopt the Greek idea that it would be a place of punishment for misdeeds,
and that the righteous would enjoy an afterlife in heaven.[6] In this period too the older three-level cosmology was widely replaced by
the Greek concept of a spherical earth suspended in space at thecentre of a number of concentric heavens.[4]

Christianity/modern Judaism[edit]
See also: Ex nihilo and Creationism
Around the time of Jesus or a little earlier, the Greek idea that God had actually created matter replaced the older idea that matter
had always existed, but in a chaotic state. This concept, calledcreatio ex nihilo, is now the accepted orthodoxy of most
denominations of Judaism and Christianity. Most denominations of Christianity and Judaism claim that a single, uncreated God was
responsible for the creation of the cosmos.[7]

Mormon cosmology[edit]
Main article: Mormon cosmology
The Earth's creation, according to Mormon scripture, was not ex nihilo, but organized from existing matter. The faith teaches that
this earth is just one of many inhabited worlds, and that there are many governing heavenly bodies, including a planet or
star Kolob which is said to be nearest the throne of God. According to the King Follett discourse, God the Father himself once
passed through mortality like Jesus did, but how, when, or where that took place is unclear. The prevailing view among Mormons is
that God once lived on a planet with his own higher god.[8][9]

Islamic cosmology[edit]
Main articles: Islamic cosmology and Sufi Cosmology
Islam teaches that God created the universe, including Earth's physical environment and human beings. The highest goal is to
visualize the cosmos as a book of symbols for meditation and contemplation for spiritual upliftment or as a prison from which the
human soul must escape to attain true freedom in the spiritual journey to God.[10]
Below here there are some other citations from the Quran on cosmology.
"And the heavens We constructed with strength, and indeed, We are [its] expander." 51:47 Sahih International
"Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of creation), before we clove them
asunder? We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?" 21:30 Yusuf Ali translation
"The Day that We roll up the heavens like a scroll rolled up for books (completed),- even as We produced the first creation, so shall
We produce a new one: a promise We have undertaken: truly shall We fulfil it." 21:104 Yusuf Ali translation

Buddhism[edit]
Main article: Buddhist cosmology
In Buddhism, the universe comes into existence dependent upon the actions (karma) of its inhabitants. Buddhists posit neither an
ultimate beginning or final end to the universe, but see the universe as something in flux, passing in and out of existence, parallel to
an infinite number of other universes doing the same thing.
The Buddhist universe consists of a large number of worlds which correspond to different mental states, including passive states of
trance, passionless states of purity, and lower states of desire, anger, and fear. The beings in these worlds are all coming into
existence or being born, and passing out of existence into other states, or dying. A world comes into existence when the first being
in it is born, and ceases to exist, as such, when the last being in it dies. The universe of these worlds also is born and dies, with the
death of the last being preceding a universal conflagration that destroys the physical structure of the worlds; then, after an interval,

beings begin to be born again and the universe is once again built up. Other universes, however, also exist, and there are higher
planes of existence which are never destroyed, though beings that live in them also come into and pass out of existence.
As well as a model of universal origins and destruction, Buddhist cosmology also functions as a model of the mind, with its thoughts
coming into existence based on preceding thoughts, and being transformed into other thoughts and other states.

Hinduism[edit]

Main article: Hindu cosmology

The Hindu cosmology and timeline is the closest to modern scientific timelines and even more which might indicate that the Big
Bang is not the beginning of everything but just the start of the present cycle preceded by an infinite number of universes and to be
followed by another infinite number of universes. It also includes an infinite number of universes at one given time.

The Rig Veda questions the origin of the cosmos in: "Neither being (sat) nor non-being was as yet. What was concealed? And
where? And in whose protection?Who really knows? Who can declare it? Whence was it born, and whence came this creation?
The devas (demigods) were born later than this world's creation, so who knows from where it came into existence? None can know
from where creation has arisen, and whether he has or has not produced it. He who surveys it in the highest heavens, he alone
knows-or perhaps does not know." (Rig Veda 10. 129)

Large scale structure of the Universe according to one Hindu cosmology.

Map 2: Intermediate neighbourhood of the Earth according to one Hindu cosmology.

Map 3: Local neighbourhood of the Earth according to one Hindu cosmology.

The Rig Veda's view of the cosmos also sees one true divine principle self-projecting as the divine word, Vaak, 'birthing' the cosmos
that we know, from the monistic Hiranyagarbha or Golden Womb. The Hiranyagarbha is alternatively viewed as Brahma, the creator
who was in turn created by God, or as God (Brahman) himself. The universe is considered to constantly expand since creation and
disappear into a thin haze after billions of years.[citation needed] An alternate view is that the universe begins to contract after reaching its
maximum expansion limits until it disappears into a fraction of a millimeter.[citation needed] The creation begins anew after billions of years
(Solar years) of non-existence.

The puranic view asserts that the universe is created, destroyed, and re-created in an eternally repetitive series of cycles. In Hindu
cosmology, a universe endures for about 4,320,000,000 years (one day of Brahma, the creator or kalpa) and is then destroyed by
fire or water elements. At this point, Brahma rests for one night, just as long as the day. This process, named pralaya (Cataclysm),
repeats for 100 Brahma years (311 Trillion, 40 Billion Human Years) that represents Brahma's lifespan. Similarly at a given time
there are an infinite number of Brahma's performing the creation of each of these universes that are infinite in number. Brahma is
the creator but not necessarily regarded as God in Hinduism. He is mostly regarded as a creation of God / Brahman.
We are currently[when?] believed to be in the 51st year of the present Brahma and so about 156 trillion years have elapsed since He
was born as Brahma. After Brahma's "death", it is necessary that another 100 Brahma years (311 Trillion, 40 Billion Years) pass until
a new Brahma is born and the whole creation begins anew. This process is repeated again and again, forever.
Brahma's day is divided in one thousand cycles (Maha Yuga, or the Great Year). Maha Yuga, during which life, including the human
race appears and then disappears, has 71 divisions, each made of 14 Manvantara (1000) years. Each Maha Yuga lasts for
4,320,000 years.Manvantara is Manu's cycle, the one who gives birth and governs the human race.
Each Maha Yuga consists of a series of four shorter yugas, or ages. The yugas get progressively worse from a moral point of view
as one proceeds from one yuga to another. As a result, each yuga is of shorter duration than the age that preceded it. The
current Kali Yuga (Iron Age) began at midnight 17 February / 18 February in 3102 BC in the proleptic Julian calendar.
Space and time are considered to be maya (illusion). What looks like 100 years in the cosmos of Brahma could be thousands of
years in other worlds, millions of years in some other worlds and 311 trillion and 40 billion years for our solar system and earth.

Jainism[edit]
Main article: Jain cosmology
Jain cosmology considers the loka, or universe, as an uncreated entity, existing since infinity, having no beginning or an end. [11] Jain
texts describe the shape of the universe as similar to a man standing with legs apart and arm resting on his waist. This Universe,
according to Jainism, is narrow at the top, broad at the middle and once again becomes broad at the bottom. [12]
Mahpurna of crya Jinasena is famous for this quote: "Some foolish men declare that a creator made the world. The doctrine
that the world was created is ill advised and should be rejected. If God created the world, where was he before the creation? If you
say he was transcendent then and needed no support, where is he now? How could God have made this world without any raw
material? If you say that he made this first, and then the world, you are faced with an endless regression."

Chinese mythology[edit]
Main articles: Chinese creation myth and Tian
There is a "primordial universe" Wuji (philosophy), and Hongjun Laozu, water or qi.[13][14] It transformed into Taiji and multiplied into
everything.[15][16] The Pangulegend tells a formless chaos coalesced into a cosmic egg. Pangu emerged (or woke up) and separated
Yin from Yang with a swing of his giant axe, creating theEarth (murky Yin) and the Sky (clear Yang). To keep them separated, Pangu
stood between them and pushed up the Sky. After Pangu died, he became

The great antimatter mystery

11 April 2008 by Helen Quinn and Yossi Nir

Magazine issue 2651. Subscribe and save
For similar stories, visit the Cosmology , Quantum World and The Large Hadron Collider Topic Guides

IT IS lucky for us that the infant universe did not behave the way our best cosmic theories would have it. Nearly 14 billion years
ago, the big bang forged equal amounts of matter and its nemesis, antimatter. These should have annihilated each other in
bursts of pure radiation, leaving a universe filled with light. Instead, though, it is full of stars and planets and gas - something
threw a cosmic spanner in the works.

The stars and galaxies that light up the heavens would not exist today if matter had not won out over antimatter at some very
early time in the evolution of the universe. How and when did this happen? Why is there something rather than nothing? These
questions are at the root of our very existence, but as yet science has no clear answers.
That's not to say we haven't made progress. As in any good ...
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Cosmology: The Study of the Universe

Cosmology is the scientific study of the large scale properties of the universe as a
whole. It endeavors to use the scientific method to understand the origin, evolution and
ultimate fate of the entire Universe. Like any field of science, cosmology involves the
formation of theories or hypotheses about the universe which make specific predictions
for phenomena that can be tested with observations. Depending on the outcome of the
observations, the theories will need to be abandoned, revised or extended to
accommodate the data. The prevailing theory about the origin and evolution of our
Universe is the so-called Big Bang theory.
Choose from the links in the left column for discussed at length.
This primer in cosmological concepts is organized as follows:

The main concepts of the Big Bang theory are introduced in the first section with scant
regard to actual observations.

The second section discusses the classic tests of the Big Bang theory that make it so
compelling as the most likely valid and accurate description of our universe.

The third section discusses observations that highlight limitations of the Big Bang theory
and point to a more detailed model of cosmology than the Big Bang theory alone
provides. As discussed in the first section, the Big Bang theory predicts a range of
possibilities for the structure and evolution of the universe.

The final section discusses what constraints we can place on the nature of our universe
based on current data, and indicates how WMAP furthers our understanding of
cosmology.

In addition, a few related topics are discussed based on commmonly asked questions.

For purposed of citation of this portion of the site or the downloadable PDF you can use
this information:
This timeline of cosmological theories and discoveries is a chronological record of the development of humanity's understanding
of the cosmosover the last two-plus millennia. Modern cosmological ideas follow the development of the scientific
discipline of physical cosmology.

Pre-1900[edit]

ca. 16th century BC Mesopotamian cosmology has a flat, circular earth enclosed in a cosmic ocean.[1]

ca. 12th century BC The Rigveda has some cosmological hymns, particularly in the late book 10, notably
the Nasadiya Sukta which describes the origin of the universe, originating from the monistic Hiranyagarbha or "Golden Egg".

6th century BC The Babylonian world map shows the earth surrounded by the cosmic ocean, with seven islands
arranged around it so as to form a seven-pointed star. Contemporary Biblical cosmology reflects the same view of a flat,
circular Earth swimming on water and overarched by the solid vault of the firmament to which are fastened the stars.

4th century BC Aristotle proposes an Earth-centered universe in which the Earth is stationary and the cosmos (or
universe) is finite in extent but infinite in time

3rd century BC Aristarchus of Samos proposes a Sun-centered universe

3rd century BC Archimedes in his essay The Sand Reckoner, estimates the diameter of the cosmos to be the
equivalent in stadia of what we call two light years

2nd century BC Seleucus of Seleucia elaborates on Aristarchus' heliocentric universe, using the phenomenon
of tides to explain heliocentrism

2nd century AD Ptolemy proposes an Earth-centered universe, with the Sun, moon, and visible planets revolving
around the Earth

5th-11th centuries Several astronomers propose a Sun-centered universe, including Aryabhata, Albumasar[2] and AlSijzi

6th century John Philoponus proposes a universe that is finite in time and argues against the ancient Greek notion of
an infinite universe

ca. 8th century Puranic Hindu cosmology, in which the Universe goes through repeated cycles of creation, destruction
and rebirth, with each cycle lasting 4.32 billion years.

9th-12th centuries Al-Kindi (Alkindus), Saadia Gaon (Saadia ben Joseph) and Al-Ghazali (Algazel) support a universe
that has a finite past and develop two logical arguments against the notion of an infinite past, one of which is later adopted
by Immanuel Kant

964 Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi (Azophi), a Persian astronomer, makes the first recorded observations of the Andromeda
Galaxy and the Large Magellanic Cloud, the first galaxies other than the Milky Way to be observed from Earth, in his Book of
Fixed Stars

12th century Fakhr al-Din al-Razi discusses Islamic cosmology, rejects Aristotle's idea of an Earth-centered universe,
and, in the context of his commentary on the Qur'anic verse, "All praise belongs to God, Lord of the Worlds," proposes that the
universe has more than "a thousand thousand worlds beyond this world such that each one of those worlds be bigger and
more massive than this world as well as having the like of what this world has."[3] He argued that there exists an infinite outer
space beyond the known world,[4] and that there could be an infinite number of universes.[5]

13th century Nasr al-Dn al-Ts provides the first empirical evidence for the Earth's rotation on its axis

13th century Nahmanides suggests the universe is expanding and that there are ten dimensions.

15th century Ali Qushji provides empirical evidence for the Earth's rotation on its axis and rejects the stationary Earth
theories of Aristotle and Ptolemy

15th-16th centuries Nilakantha Somayaji and Tycho Brahe propose a universe in which the planets orbit the Sun and
the Sun orbits the Earth, known as the Tychonic system

1543 Nicolaus Copernicus publishes his heliocentric universe in his De revolutionibus orbium coelestium
1576 Thomas Digges modifies the Copernican system by removing its outer edge and replacing the edge with a starfilled unbounded space

1584 Giordano Bruno proposes a non-hierarchical cosmology, wherein the Copernican solar system is not the center of
the universe, but rather, a relatively insignificant star system, amongst an infinite multitude of others

1610 Johannes Kepler uses the dark night sky to argue for a finite universe

1687 Sir Isaac Newton's laws describe large-scale motion throughout the universe

1720 Edmund Halley puts forth an early form of Olbers' paradox

1744 Jean-Philippe de Cheseaux puts forth an early form of Olbers' paradox

1755 Immanuel Kant asserts that the nebulae are really galaxies separate from, independent of, and outside the Milky
Way Galaxy; he calls them island universes.

1791 Erasmus Darwin pens the first description of a cyclical expanding and contracting universe in his poem The
Economy of Vegetation

1826 Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers puts forth Olbers' paradox

1848 Edgar Allan Poe offers first correct solution to Olbers' paradox in Eureka: A Prose Poem, an essay that also
suggests the expansion and collapse of the universe

19001949[edit]

1905 Albert Einstein publishes the Special Theory of Relativity, positing that space and time are not separate continua

1915 Albert Einstein publishes the General Theory of Relativity, showing that an energy density warps spacetime

1917 Willem de Sitter derives an isotropic static cosmology with a cosmological constant, as well as an
empty expanding cosmology with a cosmological constant, termed a de Sitter universe

1920 The Shapley-Curtis Debate, on the distances to spiral nebulae, takes place at the Smithsonian

1921 The National Research Council (NRC) published the official transcript of the Shapley-Curtis Debate

1922 Vesto Slipher summarizes his findings on the spiral nebulae's systematic redshifts

1922 Alexander Friedmann finds a solution to the Einstein field equations which suggests a general expansion of
space

1923 Edwin Hubble measures distances to a few nearby spiral nebulae (galaxies), the Andromeda
Galaxy (M31), Triangulum Galaxy (M33), and NGC 6822. The distances place them far outside our Milky Way, and implies that
fainter galaxies are much more distant, and the universe is composed of many thousands of galaxies.

1927 Georges Lematre discusses the creation event of an expanding universe governed by the Einstein field
equations. From its solutions to the Einstein equations, he predicts the distance-redshift relation.

1928 Howard Percy Robertson briefly mentions that Vesto Slipher's redshift measurements combined with brightness
measurements of the same galaxies indicate a redshift-distance relation

1929 Edwin Hubble demonstrates the linear redshift-distance relation and thus shows the expansion of the universe

1933 Edward Milne names and formalizes the cosmological principle

1933 Fritz Zwicky shows that the Coma cluster of galaxies contains large amounts of dark matter. This result agrees
with modern measurements, but is generally ignored until the 1970s.

1934 Georges Lematre interprets the cosmological constant as due to a vacuum energy with an unusual perfect
fluid equation of state

1938 Paul Dirac suggests the large numbers hypothesis, that the gravitational constant may be small because it is
decreasing slowly with time

1948 Ralph Alpher, Hans Bethe ("in absentia"), and George Gamow examine element synthesis in a rapidly expanding
and cooling universe, and suggest that the elements were produced by rapid neutron capture

1948 Hermann Bondi, Thomas Gold, and Fred Hoyle propose steady state cosmologies based on the perfect
cosmological principle

1948 George Gamow predicts the existence of the cosmic microwave background radiation by considering the
behavior of primordial radiation in an expanding universe

19501999[edit]

1950 Fred Hoyle coins the term "Big Bang", saying that it was not derisive; it was just a striking image meant to
highlight the difference between that and the Steady-State model.

1961 Robert Dicke argues that carbon-based life can only arise when the gravitational force is small, because this is
when burning stars exist; first use of the weak anthropic principle

1965 Hannes Alfvn proposes the now-discounted concept of ambiplasma to explain baryon asymmetry and supports
the idea of an infinite universe.

1965 Martin Rees and Dennis Sciama analyze quasar source count data and discover that the quasar density
increases with redshift.

1965 Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, astronomers at Bell Labs discover the 2.7 K microwave background radiation,
which earns them the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics. Robert Dicke,James Peebles, Peter Roll and David Todd
Wilkinson interpret it as relic from the big bang.

1966 Stephen Hawking and George Ellis show that any plausible general relativistic cosmology is singular

1966 James Peebles shows that the hot Big Bang predicts the correct helium abundance

1967 Andrei Sakharov presents the requirements for baryogenesis, a baryon-antibaryon asymmetry in the universe

1967 John Bahcall, Wal Sargent, and Maarten Schmidt measure the fine-structure splitting of spectral lines in 3C191
and thereby show that the fine-structure constant does not vary significantly with time

1967 Robert Wagoner, William Fowler, and Fred Hoyle show that the hot Big Bang predicts the
correct deuterium and lithium abundances

1968 Brandon Carter speculates that perhaps the fundamental constants of nature must lie within a restricted range to
allow the emergence of life; first use of the strong anthropic principle

1969 Charles Misner formally presents the Big Bang horizon problem

1969 Robert Dicke formally presents the Big Bang flatness problem

1970 Vera Rubin and Kent Ford measure spiral galaxy rotation curves at large radii, showing evidence for substantial
amounts of dark matter.

1973 Edward Tryon proposes that the universe may be a large scale quantum mechanical vacuum fluctuation where
positive mass-energy is balanced by negative gravitational potential energy

1976 Alex Shlyakhter uses samarium ratios from the Oklo prehistoric natural nuclear fission reactor in Gabon to show
that some laws of physics have remained unchanged for over two billion years

1977 Gary Steigman, David Schramm, and James Gunn examine the relation between the primordial helium
abundance and number of neutrinos and claim that at most five lepton families can exist.

1980 Alan Guth and Alexei Starobinsky independently propose the inflationary Big Bang universe as a possible
solution to the horizon and flatness problems.

1981 Viacheslav Mukhanov and G. Chibisov propose that quantum fluctuations could lead to large scale structure in
an inflationary universe.

1982 The first CfA galaxy redshift survey is completed.

1982 Several groups including James Peebles, J. Richard Bond and George Blumenthal propose that the universe is
dominated by cold dark matter.

1983 - 1987 The first large computer simulations of cosmic structure formation are run by Davis, Efstathiou, Frenk and
White. The results show that cold dark matter produces a reasonable match to observations, but hot dark matter does not.

1988 The CfA2 Great Wall is discovered in the CfA2 redshift survey.

1988 Measurements of galaxy large-scale flows provide evidence for the Great Attractor.

1990 Preliminary results from NASA's COBE mission confirm the cosmic microwave background radiation has
a blackbody spectrum to an astonishing one part in 105 precision, thus eliminating the possibility of an integrated starlight
model proposed for the background by steady state enthusiasts.

1992 Further COBE measurements discover the very small anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background, providing
a "baby picture" of the seeds of large-scale structure when the Universe was around 1/1100th of its present size and 380,000
years old.

1998 Controversial evidence for the fine structure constant varying over the lifetime of the universe is first published.

1998 The Supernova Cosmology Project and High-Z Supernova Search Team discover cosmic acceleration based on
distances to Type Ia supernovae, providing the first direct evidence for a non-zero cosmological constant.

1999 Measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation with finer resolution than COBE, (most notably by
the BOOMERanG experiment see Mauskopf et al., 1999, Melchiorri et al., 1999, de Bernardis et al. 2000) provide evidence for
oscillations (the first acoustic peak) in the anisotropy angular spectrum, as expected in the standard model of cosmological
structure formation. These results indicate that the geometry of the universe is close to flat.

Since 2000[edit]

2001 The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dF) by an Australian/British team gave strong evidence that the matter density
is near 25% of critical density. Together with the CMB results for a flat universe, this provides independent evidence for
a cosmological constant or similar dark energy.

2002 The Cosmic Background Imager (CBI) in Chile obtained images of the cosmic microwave background radiation
with the highest angular resolution of 4 arc minutes. It also obtained the anisotropy spectrum at high-resolution not covered
before up to l ~ 3000. It found a slight excess in power at high-resolution (l > 2500) not yet completely explained, the so-called
"CBI-excess".

2003 NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) obtained full-sky detailed pictures of the cosmic
microwave background radiation. The image can be interpreted to indicate that the universe is 13.7 billion years old (within one
percent error), and are very consistent with the Lambda-CDM model and the density fluctuations predicted by inflation.

2003 The Sloan Great Wall is discovered.

2004 The Degree Angular Scale Interferometer (DASI) first obtained the E-mode polarization spectrum of the cosmic
microwave background radiation.

2005 The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and 2dF redshift surveys both detected the baryon acoustic
oscillation feature in the galaxy distribution, a key prediction of cold dark mattermodels.

2006 The long-awaited three-year WMAP results are released, confirming previous analysis, correcting several points,
and including polarization data.

2006-2011 Improved measurements from WMAP, new supernova surveys ESSENCE and SNLS, and baryon acoustic
oscillations from SDSS and WiggleZ, continue to be consistent with the standard Lambda-CDM model.

3 Theories That Might Blow Up the Big Bang

Time may not have a beginningand it might not exist at all.
By Adam Frank|Tuesday, March 25, 2008
RELATED TAGS: COSMOLOGY, DARK MATTER, STRING THEORY

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3 Theories That Might Blow Up the Big Bang

Time may not have a beginningand it might not exist at all.
By Adam Frank|Tuesday, March 25, 2008
RELATED TAGS: COSMOLOGY, DARK MATTER, STRING THEORY

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Image courtesy of NASA

For Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok, the Big Bang ended on a summer day in 1999 in Cambridge, England. Sitting
together at a conference they had organized, called A School on Connecting Fundamental Physics and Cosmology,
the two physicists suddenly hit on the same idea. Maybe science was finally ready to tackle the mystery of what made
the Big Bang go bang. And if so, then maybe science could also address one of the deepest questions of all: What
came before the Big Bang?
Steinhardt and Turokworking closely with a few like-minded colleagueshave now developed these insights into a
thorough alternative to the prevailing, Genesis-like view of cosmology. According to the Big Bang theory, the whole
universe emerged during a single moment some 13.7 billion years ago. In the competing theory, our
universe generates and regenerates itself in an endless cycle of creation. The latest version of the cyclic model even
matches key pieces of observational evidence supporting the older view.
This is the most detailed challenge yet to the 40-year-old orthodoxy of the Big Bang. Some researchers go further and
envision a type of infinite time that plays out not just in this universe but in a multiversea multitude of universes,
each with its own laws of physics and its own life story. Still others seek to revise thevery idea of time, rendering the
concept of a beginning meaningless.
All of these cosmology heretics agree on one thing: The Big Bang no longer defines the limit of how far the human
mind can explore.
Big Idea 1: The Incredible Bulk
The latest elaboration of Steinhardt and Turoks cyclic cosmology, spearheaded by Evgeny Buchbinder of Perimeter
Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, was published last December. Yet the impulse behind this work
far predates modern theories of the universe. In the fourth century A.D., St. Augustine pondered what the Lord was
doing before the first day of Genesis (wryly repeating the exasperated retort that He was preparing Hell for those
who pry too deep). The question became a scientific one in 1929, when Edwin Hubble determined that the universe

was expanding. Extrapolated backward, Hubbles observation suggested the cosmos was flying apart from an
explosive origin, the fabled Big Bang.
In the standard interpretation of the Big Bang, which took shape in the 1960s, the formative event was not an
explosion that occurred at some point in space and timeit was an explosion of space and time. In this view, time did
not exist beforehand. Even for many researchers in the field, this was a bitter pill to swallow. It is hard to imagine
time just starting: How does a universe decide when it is time to pop into existence?
For years, every attempt to understand what happened in that formative moment quickly hit a dead end. In the
standard Big Bang model, the universe began in a state of near-infinite density and temperature. At such extremes the
known laws of physics break down. To push all the way back to the beginning of time, physicists needed a new theory,
one that blended general relativity with quantum mechanics.
The prospects for making sense of the Big Bang began to improve in the 1990s as physicists refined their ideas
in string theory, a promising approach for reconciling the relativity and quantum views. Nobody knows yet whether
string theorymatches up with the real worldthe Large Hadron Collider, a particle smasher coming on line later this
year, may provide some cluesbut it has already inspired stunning ideas about how the universe is constructed. Most
notably, current versions of string theory posit seven hidden dimensions of space in addition to the three we
experience.
Strange and wonderful things can happen in those extra dimensions: That is what inspired Steinhardt (of Princeton
University) and Turok (of Cambridge University) to set up their fateful conference in 1999. We organized the
conference because we both felt that the standard Big Bang model was failing to explain things, Turok says. We
wanted to bring people together to talk about what string theory could do for cosmology.
The key concept turned out to be a brane, a three-dimensional world embedded in a higher-dimensional space (the
term, in the language of string theory, is just short for membrane). People had just started talking about branes
when we set up the conference, Steinhardt recalls. Together Neil and I went to a talk where the speaker was
describing them as static objects. Afterward we both asked the same question: What happens if the branes can move?
What happens if they collide?
A remarkable picture began to take shape in the two physicists minds. A sheet of paper blowing in the wind is a kind
of two-dimensional membrane tumbling through our three-dimensional world. For Steinhardt and Turok, our entire
universe is just one sheet, or 3-D brane, moving through a four-dimensional background called the bulk. Our brane
is not the only one; there are others moving through the bulk as well. Just as two sheets of paper could be blown
together in a storm, different 3-D branes could collide within the bulk.
The equations of string theory indicated that each 3-D brane would exert powerful forces on others nearby in the
bulk. Vast quantities of energy lie bound up in those forces. A collision between two branes could unleash those
energies. From the inside, the result would look like a tremendous explosion. Even more intriguing, the theoretical
characteristics of that explosion closely matched the observed properties of the Big Bangincluding the cosmic
microwave background, the afterglow of the universes fiercely hot early days. That was amazing for us because it
meant colliding branes could explain one of the key pieces of evidence people use to support the Big Bang, Steinhardt
says.
Three years later came a second epiphany: Steinhardt and Turok found their story did not end after the collision. We
werent looking for cycles, Steinhardt says, but the model naturally produces them. After a collision, energy gives
rise to matter in the brane worlds. The matter then evolves into the kind of universe we know: galaxies, stars, planets,
the works. Space within the branes expands, and at first the distance between the branes (in the bulk) grows too.
When the brane worlds expand so much that their space is nearly empty, however, attractive forces between the

branes draw the world-sheets together again. A new collision occurs, and a new cycle of creation begins. In this
model, each round of existenceeach cycle from one collision to the nextstretches about a trillion years. By that
reckoning, our universe is still in its infancy, being only 0.1 percent of the way through the current cycle.
The cyclic universe directly solves the problem of before. With an infinity of Big Bangs, time stretches into forever in
both directions. The Big Bang was not the beginning of space and time, Steinhardt says. There was a before, and
before matters because it leaves an imprint on what happens in the next cycle.
Not everyone is pleased by this departure from the usual cosmological thinking. Some researchers consider
Steinhardt and Turoks ideas misguided or even dangerous. I had one well-respected scientist tell me we should stop
because we were undermining public confidence in the Big Bang, Turok says. But part of the appeal of the cyclic
universe is that it is not just a beautiful ideait is a testable one.
The standard model of the early universe predicts that space is full of gravitational waves, ripples in space-time left
over from the first instants after the Big Bang. These waves look very different in the cyclic model, and those
differences could be measuredas soon as physicists develop an effective gravity-wave detector. It may take 20 years
before we have the technology, Turok says, but in principle it can be done. Given the importance of the question, Id
say its worth the wait.
BIG IDEA 2: Times Arrow
While the concept of a cyclic universe provides a way to explore the Big Bangs past, some scientists believe that
Steinhardt and Turok have skirted the deeper issue of origins. The real problem is not the beginning of time but the
arrow of time, says Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at Caltech. Looking for a universe that repeats itself is
exactly what you do not want. Cycles still give us a time that flows with a definite direction, and the direction of time
is the very thing we need to explain.
In 2004 Carroll and a graduate student of his, Jennifer Chen, came up with a much different answer (pdf) to the
problem of before. In his view, times arrow and times beginning cannot be treated separately: There is no way to
address what came before the Big Bang until we understand why the before precedes the after. Like Steinhardt and
Turok, Carroll thinks that finding the answer requires rethinking the full extent of the universe, but Carroll is not
satisfied with adding more dimensions. He also wants to add more universesa whole lot more of themto show
that, in the big picture, time does not flow so much as advance symmetrically backward and forward.
Barbour argues that time is an illusion, with each momenteach Nowexisting in its own right, complete and
whole.
The one-way progression of time, always into the future, is one of the greatest enigmas in physics. The equations
governing individual objects do not care about times direction. Imagine a movie of two billiard balls colliding; there is
no way to say if the movie is being run forward or backward. But if you gather a zillion atoms together in something
like a balloon, past and future look very different. Pop the balloon and the air molecules inside quickly fill the entire
space; they never race backward to reinflate the balloon.
In any such large group of objects, the system trends toward equilibrium. Physicists use the term entropy to describe
how far a system is from equilibrium. The closer it is, the higher its entropy; full equilibrium is, by definition, the
maximum value. So the path from low entropy (all the molecules in one corner of the room, unstable) to maximum
entropy (the molecules evenly distributed in the room, stable) defines the arrow of time. The route to equilibrium
separates before from after. Once you hit equilibrium the arrow of time no longer matters, becausechange is no longer
possible.

Our universe has been evolving for 13 billion years, Carroll says, so it clearly did not start in equilibrium. Rather,
all the matter, energy, space, and even time in the universe must have started in a state of extraordinarily low entropy.
That is the only way we could begin with a Big Bang and end up with the wonderfully diverse cosmos of today.
Understand how that happened, Carroll argues, and you will understand the bigger process that brought our universe
into being.
To demonstrate just how strange our universe is, Carroll considers all the other ways it might have been constructed.
Thinking about the range of possibilities, he wonders: Why did the initial setup of the universe allow cosmic time to
have a direction? There are an infinite number of ways the initial universe could have been set up. An overwhelming
majority of them have high entropy. These high-entropy universes would be boring and inert; evolution and change
would not be possible. Such a universe could not produce galaxies and stars, and it certainly could not support life.
It is almost as if our universe were fine-tuned to start out far from equilibrium so it could possess an arrow of time.
But to a physicist, invoking fine-tuning is akin to saying a miracle occurred. For Carroll, the challenge was finding a
process that would explain the universes low entropy naturally, without any appeal to incredible coincidence or
(worse) to a miracle.
Carroll found that process hidden inside one of the strangest and most exciting recent elaborations of the Big Bang
theory. In 1984, MIT physicist Alan Guth suggested that the very young universe had gone through a brief period of
runaway expansion, which he called inflation, and that this expansion had blown up one small corner of an earlier
universe into everything we see. In the late 1980s Guth and other physicists, most notably Andrei Linde, now at
Stanford, saw that inflation might happen over and over in a process of eternal inflation. As a result, pocket
universes much like our own might be popping out of the uninflated background all the time. This multitude of
universes was called, inevitably, the multiverse.
Carroll found in the multiverse concept a solution to both the direction and the origin of cosmic time. He had been
musing over the arrow of time as far back as graduate school in the late 1980s, when he published papers on the
feasibility of time travel using known physics. Eternal inflation suggested that it was not enough to think about time
in our universe only; he realized he needed to consider it in a much bigger, multiverse context.
We wondered if eternal inflation could work in both directions, Carroll says. That means there would be no need
for a single Big Bang. Pocket universes would always sprout from the uninflated background. The trick needed to
make eternal inflation work was to find a generic starting point: an easy-to-achieve condition that would occur
infinitely many times and allow eternal inflation to flow in both directions.
A full theory of eternal inflation came together in Carrolls mind in 2004, while he was attending a five-month
workshop on cosmology at the University of California at Santa Barbaras famous Kavli Institute of Theoretical
Physics with his student Jennifer Chen. You go to a place like Kavli and you are away from the normal
responsibilities of teaching, Carroll says. That gives you time to pull things together. In those few months, Carroll
and Chen worked out a vision of a profligate multiverse without beginnings, endings, or an arrow of time.
All you need, Carroll says, with a physicists penchant for understatement, is to start with some empty space, a
shard of dark energy, and some patience. Dark energya hidden type of energy embedded in empty space, whose
existence is strongly confirmed by recent observationsis crucial because quantum physics says that any energy field
will always yield random fluctuations. In Carroll and Chens theory, fluctuations in the dark-energy background
function as seeds that trigger new rounds of inflation, creating a crop of pocket universes from empty space.
Some of these pocket universes will collapse into black holes and evaporate, taking themselves out of the picture,
Carroll says. But others will expand forever. The ones that expand eventually thin out. They become the new empty
space from which more inflation can start. The whole process can happen again and again. Amazingly, the direction

of time does not matter in the process. That is the funny part. You can evolve the little inflating universes in either
direction away from your generic starting point, Carroll says. In the super-far past of our universe, long before the
Big Bang, there could have been other Big Bangs for which the arrow of time ran in the opposite direction.
On the grandest scale, the multiverse is like a foam of interconnected pocket universes, completely symmetric with
respect to time. Some universes move forward, but overall, an equal number move backward. With infinite space in
infinite universes, there are no bounds on entropy. It can always increase; every universe is born with room (and
entropy) to evolve. The Big Bang is just our Big Bang, and it is not unique. The question of before melts away because
the multiverse has always existed and always will, evolving butin a statistical sensealways the same.
After completing his multiverse paper with Chen, Carroll felt a twinge of dismay. When you finish something like
this, its bittersweet. The fun with hard problems can be in the chase, he says. Luckily for him, the chase goes on.
Our paper really expresses a minority viewpoint, he admits. He is now hard at work on follow-up papers fleshing
out the details and bolstering his argument.
BIG IDEA 3: The Nows Have It
In 1999, while Steinhardt and Turok were convening in Cambridge and Carroll was meditating on the meaning of the
multiverse, rebel physicist Julian Barbour published The End of Timea manifesto suggesting that attempts to
address what came before the Big Bang were based on a fundamental mistake. There is no need to find a solution to
times beginning, Barbour insisted, because time does not actually exist.
Back in 1963, a magazine article had changed Barbours life. At the time he was just a young physics graduate student
heading off for a relaxing trip to the mountains. I was studying in Germany and had brought an article with me on
holiday to the Bavarian Alps, says Barbour, now 71. It was about the great physicist Paul Dirac. He was speculating
on the nature of time and space in the theory of relativity. After finishing the article Barbour was left with a question
he would never be able to relinquish: What, really, is time? He could not stop thinking about it. He turned around
halfway up the mountain and never made it to the top.
Perhaps some universes move forward in time while an equal number move backward; the Big Bang is just our Big
Bang.
I knew that it would take years to understand my question, Barbour recalls. There was no way I could have a
normal academic career, publishing paper after paper, and really get anywhere. With bulldog determination he left
academic physics and settled in rural England, supporting his family translating Russian scientific journals. Thirtyeight years later, still living in the same house, he has worked out enough answers to rise from obscurity and capture
the attention of the worlds physics community.
In the 1970s Barbour began publishing his ideas in respected but slightly unconventional journals, like The British
Journal for the Philosophy of Scienceand Proceedings of the Royal Society A. He continues to issue papers, most
recently with his collaborator Edward Anderson (pdf) of the University of Cambridge. Barbours arguments are
complex, but his core idea remains simplicity itself: There is no time (pdf). If you try to get your hands on time, its
always slipping through your fingers, Barbour says with his disarming English charm. My feeling is that people cant
get hold of time because it isnt there at all.
Isaac Newton thought of time as a river flowing at the same rate everywhere. Albert Einstein unified space and time
into a single entity, but he still held on to the concept of time as a measure of change. In Barbours view there is no
invisible river of time. Instead, he thinks that change merely creates an illusion of time, with each individual moment
existing in its own right, complete and whole. He calls these moments Nows.

As we live, we seem to move through a succession of Nows. The question is, what are they? Barbour asks. His
answer: Each Now is an arrangement of everything in the universe. We have the strong impression that things have
definite positions relative to each other. I aim to abstract away everything we cannot see, directly or indirectly, and
simply keep this idea of many different things coexisting at once. There are simply the Nows, nothing more and
nothing less.
Barbours Nows can be imagined as pages of a novel ripped from the books spine and tossed randomly onto the floor.
Each page is a separate entity. Arranging the pages in some special order and moving through them step by step
makes it seem that a story is unfolding. Even so, no matter how we arrange the sheets, each page is complete and
independent. For Barbour, reality is just the physics of these Nows taken together as a whole.
What really intrigues me is that the totality of all possible Nows has a very special structure, he says. You can think
of it as a landscape or country. Each point in this country is a Now, and I call the country Platonia, in reference to
Platos conception of a deeper reality, because it is timeless and created by perfect mathematical rules. Platonia is the
true arena of the universe.
In Platonia all possible configurations of the universe, every possible location of every atom, exist simultaneously.
There is no past moment that flows into a future moment; the question of what came before the Big Bang never arises
because Barbours cosmology has no time. The Big Bang is not an event in the distant past; it is just one special place
in Platonia.
Our illusion of the past comes because each Now in Platonia contains objects that appear as records, in Barbours
language. The only evidence you have of last week is your memorybut memory comes from a stable structure of
neurons in your brain now. The only evidence we have of the earths past are rocks and fossilsbut these are just
stable structures in the form of an arrangement of minerals we examine in the present. All we have are these records,
and we only have them in this Now, Barbour says. In his theory, some Nows are linked to others in Platonias
landscape even though they all exist simultaneously. Those links create the appearance of a sequence from past to
future, but there is no actual flow of time from one Now to another.
Think of the integers, Barbour says. Every integer exists simultaneously. But some of the integers are linked in
structure, like the set of all primes or the numbers you get from the Fibonacci series. Yet the number 3 does not
occur in the past of the number 5 any more than the Big Bang exists in the past of the year 2008.
These ideas might sound like the stuff of late-night dorm-room conversations, but Barbour has spent four decades
hammering them out in the hard language of mathematical physics (pdf). He has blended Platonia with the equations
of quantum mechanics to devise a mathematical description of a changeless physics. With Irish collaborator Niall
Murchadha of the National University of Ireland in Cork, Barbour is continuing to reformulate a time-free version of
Einsteins theory.
So What Really Happened?
For each of the alternatives to the Big Bang, it is easier to demonstrate the appeal of the idea than to prove that it is
correct. Steinhardt and Turoks cyclic cosmology can account for critical pieces of evidence usually cited to support
the Big Bang, but the experiments that could put it over the top are decades away. Carrolls model of the multiverse
depends on a speculative interpretation of inflationary cosmology, which is itself only loosely verified.
Barbour stands at the farthest extreme. He has no way to test his concept of Platonia. The power of his ideas rests
heavily on the beauty of their formulation and on their capacity to unify physics. What we are working out now is
simple and coherent, Barbour says, and because of that I believe it is showing us something fundamental.

The payoff that Barbour offers is not just a mathematical solution but a philosophical one. In place of all the
conflicting notions about the Big Bang and what came before, he offers a way out. He proposes letting go of the past
of the whole idea of the pastand living fully, happily, in the Now.
In one model, each round of existence stretches a trillion years. By that reckoning, our universe is still in its infancy.