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In physical cosmology, the Big Bang is the scientific theory of how the universe emerged from a tremendously dense and hot state about 13.7 billion years ago. The Big Bang theory is based on the observed Hubble's law redshift of distant galaxies that when taken together with the cosmological principle indicate that space is expanding according to the Friedmann-LemaƮtre model of general relativity. Extrapolated into the past, these observations show that the universe has expanded from a state in which all the matter and energy in the universe was at an immense temperature and density. Physicists do not widely agree on what happened before this, although general relativity predicts a gravitational singularity (for reporting on some of the more notable speculation on this issue, see cosmogony).

The term Big Bang is used both in a narrow sense to refer to a point in time when the observed expansion of the universe (Hubble's law) began — calculated to be 13.7 billion (1.37 Ɨ 1010) years ago (Ā±2%) — and in a more general sense to refer to the prevailing cosmological paradigm explaining the origin and expansion of the universe, as well as the composition of primordial matter through nucleosynthesis as predicted by the Alpher-Bethe-Gamow theory.[1]

From this model, George Gamow in 1948 was able to predict, at least qualitatively, the existence of cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB).[2] The CMB was discovered in the 1960s and further validated the Big Bang theory over its chief rival, the steady state theory.

References[]

  1. ā†‘ R. A. Alpher, H. A. Bethe, G. Gamow, "The Origin of Chemical Elements,"Physical Review 73 (1948), 803.
  2. ā†‘ G. Gamow, Nature 162 (1948), 680.
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