• Question: How do you think the universe was formed?

    Asked by Nathan to Aisling, Anil, Claire, Leona, Micki on 9 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Micki Mitchell

      Micki Mitchell answered on 9 Nov 2015:

      If I knew that, you would be talking to a Nobel Prize winner now.. It’s fascinating, and I do ask myself that question a lot! I’m always stuck at “yea, but how did THAT come to be” mind-boggling. There are a lot of theories, but nobody can explain the total beginning. If I come up with the answer,I let you know 🙂

    • Photo: Aisling Kerr

      Aisling Kerr answered on 10 Nov 2015:

      Well, that is not an easy question! I think the most common theory is the Big Bang – an explosion caused all of time, space, matter, and energy to come into existence about 15 billion years ago. All that would have existed were elementary particles, such as electrons and neutrons. These were exploded in all different directions causing the universe to expand in size massively in a short period of time. This expansion which is known as Inflation, happened when the universe was only 10-34 seconds old. That is a hundred quadrillion quintillionth of a second! As these particles cooled, they clumped together to form light atoms like hydrogen. Then, these atoms clumped together and so on to form stars and galaxies. These stars were then hot enough to form heavy elements. And boom! 15 billion years later the universe as we know it exists! This is the standard model for the formation of the universe but it still leaves some questions unanswered – how do dark matter and energy fit this model? What happened in that 10-34 seconds? There are still time for this theory to be thrown out in place of a new one or to expand on it to include these points but we may also never know!

    • Photo: Leona Mc Girr

      Leona Mc Girr answered on 10 Nov 2015:

      Thats a tough question, its really hard to know but I think the Big Bang is probably the most likely explanation. Im not sure if we will ever find out?

    • Photo: Claire O'Connell

      Claire O'Connell answered on 10 Nov 2015:

      I’m honestly not sure! I read a really interesting book that you may have heard from by Stephen Hawking on A Brief History of Time. It explored a lot of ideas about how the big bang started and how the universe expanded like a big balloon been blown up and that some say it should shrink again as if you were letting the air out. But we have yet to see that…
      Anyway, I think if the great scientists like Hawking and Einstein haven’t figured it out yet then we may be left scratching our heads for another while.

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