The Greatest Expansion Part-1

I have always observed that most people are not capable of understanding hard science, that is why they say things like, because I have never seen anything being created by an explosion so how can universe exist due to some explosion or big bang? or I have never seen a man being created from a monkey, that is why this cannot happen. This is not their ignorance but a failure of science communication. Listening to many common people's understanding of modern or basic scientific principles, it seems to me as if science and especially physics is now just a name for writing research papers and humming in echo chambers with fellow scientists.

And because of this some random Idiot on Internet specifically on Instagram suggest or question the credibility of Big  Bang that how can something comes from a bang? In this article lets dwell deep into understanding that  Big Bang Theory is not wrong and "How your inability to grasp science is not an argument against it."

Big Bang or Big Inflation?

The universe as we see it today was initially a point of infinite density, mass and temperature and all the matter and energy of the universe was concentrated in this small hot dense point.

We call this point singularity and the idea of something ​​before singularity no meaning in the context of big bang because the words 'before and after' are spoken in the context of time and time did not exist at point of singularity.

  • About 13.8 billion years ago, the universe started expanding. Big Bang is actually a bang in name only and in reality there was no explosion. Like if you suddenly start blowing on a balloon, that means take a small balloon and blow hard, it will suddenly inflates. This is called inflation and Big Bang was actually and inflation.
  • This was the point from where time starts, that means space and time did not exist before that. And we come to know this through Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and Lambda-CDM model. But we will talk about it later.
  • But this also does not mean that if some Islamic Preacher, Maulana or Hindu Baba-ji says that Allah or God is a phenomenon outside space-time, it is outside the parameters of time. Then tell him to shut up, you seventh grader, you don't even know the meaning of parameters. 
  • A cosmological parameter is a physical quantity such as the Hubble Constant (H₀), Matter Density (Ωₘ), Curvature Parameter (Ωₖ), Radiation Density Ωᵣ , Baryon Density (Ωᵦ) and even the age of the universe denoted by t₀.

Cosmological parameters are actually well-defined mathematical terms used in models of the universe and in computer simulations. Just any throwaway phrase does not make something a cosmological parameter.

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Now further, as this newly formed universe expanded, it cooled down. This is called The Era of Inflation, i.e. the beginning of seconds.

  1. The universe expanded in just this time period from 10−36 to 10−32. This expansion happened much faster than the speed of light and that is why we call the universe Homogeneous and Isotropic, i.e. the same in every direction. The CMB model verifies that our universe has no centre and it is expanding at the same speed in all directions.
  2. The energy in this very, very hot universe which was cooling down was still so high that after 10−6 seconds, elementary particles like quarks, electrons and neutrinos were formed and as it cooled further, fundamental particles like protons and neutrons started forming by combining with quarks. But the newly forming universe was still so hot that everything was in such a state that can be said as fourth state of matter, plasma, because it had to cool down and stabilise to form atoms.
  3. As the expansion happened, protons and neutrons combined to form lighter elements like hydrogen and helium, along with traces of deuterium and lithium. This process is called Big Bang nucleosynthesis, abbreviated as BBN, because all this happened in the first few minutes or ~3 minutes of the universe expanding from its point state.[1]
  4. So the calculation is that the process of nucleosynthesis lasted for about ~300 seconds or ~5 minutes, and the temperature of the universe was at least 80,00,00,000°C. This was the most unfavourable time for the formation of heavy atomic structures, and the universe had to cool down even more. [2]
  5. And then comes the long journey of 380,000 years after the Big Bang, when the universe has cooled to such a level that now the Epoch of Recombination has started to begin. The density of free electrons has started to fall rapidly and the scattering rate of photons has become more than the rate of expansion of the universe, H. Thus, now the photons are separated from the electrons and can flow freely. The universe has become a transparent place for radiation.[3]
  6. The universe has cooled, and electrons and protons have combined to form stable and neutral hydrogen atoms, double positively charged helium nuclei. The universe is no longer a place filled with a hot and non-transparent plasma, but a cold transparent void where photons can travel from one place to another. These are the photons that we study as the radiation of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).
  7. And then it took about 20 to 30 million years for the universe to expand and finally the force of gravity started to take effect. This was the point where the phenomenon we call Dark Matter today came into effect. That is why we study dark matter today to know how in the early days of the universe, gravity bound matter together to form the first structures like the first stars and galaxies. In cosmology, we call this first formation the Cosmic Dawn.
  8. After this, it took billions of years for the first stars to emit light into this new universe. This energy broke the neutral hydrogen atom. From here the process of re-ionization begins, the universe again goes from a denser state to a rarer state.[4]

Image Credit: Bigthink[5]
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Image Credit: Early star-forming galaxies and the reionization of the Universe[6]
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Question 1: When scientists know that this word BIG BANG in itself creates confusion, then why is it still being called Big Bang? Why is it not being called Big Inflation?

So the thing is that there was an astronomer named Fred Hoyle. This happened on 28 March 1949 when one day he was invited to a BBC radio program. Now it was said that he would share his views on how the universe started. So the expansion theory of the universe means that the universe is continuously expanding and if we go back in time, then there must have been some starting point, to make fun of this he called it the Big Bang theory. 

Because Fred Hoyle was in favour of the static universe theory that even if you go back in infinite time, you will still find that the universe is always creating new matter. He spent a large part of his life campaigning against the Big Bang theory. By the way, till the 1960s, even astronomers were not using this word. Fred Hoyle died in 2001 but the name lives on. [7]

And this is why we cannot call it Big Inflation because if you read point no. 1 above, you will understand that the accelerated inflation was a very short-lived event that lasted for a fraction of a second. The inflation was an whole different thing inflation because what happened after that was the expansion of the universe which is still happening today. This fact was proved by astronomer Edwin Hubble through his experiments and we measure this by the cosmological Redshift (Doppler effect on the galactic level) which is just increasing with the passage of time. [8]

Image Credit: stsci-opo[9]
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So now that you have understood what the Big Bang Theory actually is, let me answer your question in few one liners.

  1. The Big Bang was not an explosion or a blast. It was inflation for a fraction of a second and an expansion from then till today.
  2. The early universe did not only have mass but also energy in the same amount. The temperature was several million degrees Celsius and even after cooling down, it took time for the universe to come out of the plasma state of matter.
  3. As the universe cooled down, gravity started binding matter under the influence of dark matter. This situation is called the Cosmic Dawn of the universe. This process took at least two to three million years because gravity was becoming effective with the passage of time.
Now you should not have this misconception as some people theories that 'the point of singularity was a as dense and gravitationally strong as a several millions Black holes. you should answer that 'When it took billions of years for the first star to form, the existence of a black hole does not make any meaningful sense. Despite this, keep in mind that no matter how much gravity a black hole has, it is effective only in a limited perimeter. Black holes are the result of local gravitational collapse.

The universe is still expanding and gravity is unable to fight it. That is why we study Dark Energy because it is expanding more and more rapidly with time.

Finally, if you want to understand the formation of the universe, cosmic microwave background, elementary particle formation and the current expansion of the universe without any mathematical complexities or equations, then I would definitely recommend you to read the book "The First Three Minute"[10] written by Steven Weinberg in 1977. This will solidify you understanding more then this article and will make you wonder how universe was a cosmic arena during its initial periods of events that shapes our reality today.  

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Question 2: The Big Bang theory states that the universe began about 13.8 billion years ago, but it does not explain what came before that, or why the universe came into existence.

Well This is The challenge in itself. To know what was there before the Big Bang?

  • What was there before that point of singularity?
  • What pushed it to expand?
  • And what lies beyond that point where we can see the universe?

At present, our current understanding of physics is of no use at the point of singularity, the question of what came before that point becomes meaningless since the corner-stone of physics them-self breakdown. 

How?

Because at this point Einstein's Relativity, Newton's Classical Physics, Quantum Physics and its extensions whether it is Quantum Field Theory, QED, QCD, Quantum Gravity (like Loop Quantum Gravity, String Theory, Causal Dynamical Triangulation), SUSY and even Pilot Wave Theory[11] are very strong and absolutely irrefutable in their domain. But as a unit at that point of Singularity they are incomplete and trying to connect them all is equally difficult and decades long process.

So to discuss the question of what was before the point of singularity a whole new kind of physics is needed. Or the existing understanding like Hartle-Hawking Model or no-boundary proposal seems more plausible to me an idea that was proposed by by S.W. Hawking and J.B. Hartle in Physical Review D, Volume 28, Number 12, on December 15, 1983 [12].  Its and opposition to the classical big bang theory that we have discussed in this article this idea has No Singularity, No Before, doesn't break down at t=o since it consider smooth geometry with imaginary time and no boundary.[13]      

Brane Cosmology is a very good mathematical model. its complex, talk about bulk(multidimensional space), inspired by string theory and really modified the Friedmann Equations[14] which will understand in the second part of this article.Maybe the reader  himself is working on some mathematical model of pre-Big Bang? There is also a possibility that how can the point of singularity be understood through Inflationary Cosmology?

Whatever you call it, universe/reality/existence all this came into existence has been a quest of philosophy more than physics. The philosophies that have emerged from the quest for this question for centuries have helped us a lot in becoming a civilisation. Scientific discoveries are completely different from philosophy on this basis because fundamental science is not a speculation but an attempt to test and prove mathematical and factual concepts.

m. दिनेश

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M.Dinesh

M.दिनेश© 

-Dinesh Mandora     

Dinesh Mandora All rights reserved ©

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( This article is not for copying. It is prohibited to use the above text anywhere else without the permission of the author.)

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References and Footnote For People with degree in Physics/Math/Engineering

  1. Particle Data Group, Big-Bang Cosmology, 2007, https://pdg.lbl.gov/2007/reviews/bigbangrpp.pdf.
  2. Max Pettini, Introduction to Cosmology – Lecture 9: The Early Universe and Nucleosynthesis, University of Cambridge, n.d., https://people.ast.cam.ac.uk/~pettini/Intro%20Cosmology/Lecture09.pdf.
  3. Ibid.
  4. James Dunlop, The Expanding Universe and Hubble’s Law, Royal Observatory Edinburgh, n.d., https://www.roe.ac.uk/~jsd/recent_papers/Robertson.pdf. 
  5. Image at Bigthink.com link: https://bigthink.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/The-Universe-Tentpole-What-was-it-like-at-the-beginning-of-the-Big-Bang.jpg?lb=1536%2C864
  6. Robertson, B. E., Ellis, R. S., Dunlop, J. S., McLure, R. J., & Stark, D. P. (2010). Early star-forming galaxies and the reionization of the Universe. Nature, 468(7321), 49–55. link: https://www.roe.ac.uk/~jsd/recent_papers/Robertson.pdf
  7. The big bang got its name from a man who thought the theory was total nonsense.poppuler Science. Link: https://www.popsci.com/big-bang-term-origin-fred-hoyle/ \

  8. Cosmological Expansion and Redshift, Retrieved April 19, 2025, from https://www.jb.man.ac.uk/distance/frontiers/cosmology/node2.pdf

  9. image on scsci-opo.org ,Retrieved April 19, 2025, https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01F922MKNQQF0G7A99SPNA9ST7.jpg 

  10. Weinberg, Steven. The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe. Updated edition. New York: Basic Books, 1993. https://amzn.in/d/gXRUu0H

  11. https://qr.ae/pGQ9PN
  12. Hawking, S. W., & Hartle, J. B. (1983). Wave function of the universe. Physical Review D, 28(12), 2960–2975 link: https://isidore.co/misc/Physics%20papers%20and%20books/Classic%20Papers/Wavefunction%20of%20the%20Universe%20(Hartle%20&%20Hawking).pdf
  13. Hawking, S. W., Hartle, J. B., & Hertog, T. (2008). The classical universes of the no-boundary quantum state. Physical Review D, 77(12), 123537 link: https://arxiv.org/pdf/0803.1663
  14. Brax, P., van de Bruck, C., & Davis, A.-C. (2004). Brane world cosmology. Reports on Progress in Physics, 67(12), 2183–2230 link: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0034-4885/67/12/R02

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