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From: dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd)
Newsgroups: net.astro
Subject: StarDate: January 3 The Origin of the Big Bang
Message-ID: <227@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-Jan-86 02:00:59 EST
Article-I.D.: utastro.227
Posted: Fri Jan  3 02:00:59 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Jan-86 05:08:07 EST
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 56


New theories are helping scientists probe the origin of the universe.
More -- after this.

January 3  The Origin of the Big Bang

Most astronomers believe that our universe began in a Big Bang -- a
fantastic explosion during which space, time and matter burst all at
once into being.

But the old Big Bang theory was only a description of the very early
universe.  It didn`t answer questions about the creation itself --
about the origin of the Big Bang.  In fact, such questions have long
been thought to be unanswerable -- beyond the scope of science.

And yet today scientists are working on questions which lead them
farther and farther back -- closer to the origin itself.  The branch of
science addressing these questions is physics -- especially high-energy
particle physics -- which probes matter on the smallest scales.  The
tiny particles -- the essential building blocks of nature -- are
studied in huge accelerators, such as those at Fermilab near Chicago.
It`s thought that, shortly after the Big Bang, the universe consisted
of a sea of such elementary particles.  The particles later combined
into the larger, more complex structures that we have become -- and
that we see all around us today.

So physicists are studying the littlest things in nature to learn about
the grandest thing of all -- the entire universe.  They hope to be able
eventually to unify the four known forces of nature -- that is, the
electromagnetic force -- the strong and weak nuclear forces -- and the
more familiar force of gravity.  This single "superforce" sought by
physicists may have shaped the universe in the first fraction of a
second after the Big Bang.  Advances in particle physics may reveal the
hypothetical superforce -- and help us probe the creation itself.



Script by Deborah Byrd.

















(c) Copyright 1985, 1986 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin