1.

__________________________

Did you know that the matter in your body is billions of years old? According to most
astrophysicists, all the matter found in the universe today - including the matter in people,
plants, animals, the earth, stars, and galaxies - was created at the very first moment of time,
thought to be about 13 billion years ago. The universe began, scientists believe, with every
speck of its energy concentrated into a very tiny point. This extremely dense point
exploded with unimaginable force, creating matter and propelling it outward to make the
billions of galaxies of our vast universe. Astrophysicists refer to this titanic explosion as the
Big Bang.

2. __________________________

The Big Bang was like no explosion you might witness on earth today. One distinguishing
feature was the speed of the explosion. For instance, a hydrogen bomb explosion, whose
centre registers approximately 100 million degrees Celsius, moves through the air at about
300 meters per second. In contrast, cosmologists believe the Big Bang flung energy in all
directions at the speed of light (300,000,000 meters per second, a hundred thousand times
faster than the H-bomb). Also they estimate that the temperature of the entire universe was
1000 trillion degrees Celsius at just a tiny fraction of a second after the explosion. Even the
cores of the hottest stars in today's universe are much cooler than that. There's another
important quality of the Big Bang that makes it unique. While an explosion of a man-made
bomb expands through air, the Big Bang did not expand through anything. That's because
there was no space to expand through at the beginning of time. Rather, physicists believe
the Big Bang created and stretched space itself,
expanding the universe.

3. __________________________

For a brief moment after the Big Bang, the immense

heat created conditions unlike any conditions
astrophysicists see in the universe today. While planets
and stars today are composed of atoms of elements
like hydrogen and silicon, scientists believe the
universe back then was too hot for anything other than
the most fundamental particles -- such as quarks and
photons. However, as the universe quickly expanded,
the energy of the Big Bang became more and more
"diluted" in space, causing the universe to cool. photo: Space Telescope Science
Popping open a beer bottle results in a roughly similar Institute
cooling, expanding effect: gas, once confined in the
bottle, spreads into the air, and the temperature of the As the early universe cooled,
beer drops. Rapid cooling allowed for matter as we the matter produced in the Big
know it to form in the universe, although physicists are Bang gathered into stars and
still trying to figure out exactly how this happened. galaxies.
About one ten-thousandth of a second after the Big
Bang, protons and neutrons formed, and within a few minutes these particles stuck together
to form atomic nuclei, mostly hydrogen and helium. Hundreds of thousands of years later,
electrons stuck to the nuclei to make complete atoms.
4. __________________________

About a billion years after the Big Bang, gravity caused these atoms to gather in huge
clouds of gas, forming collections of stars known as galaxies. Gravity is the force that pulls
any objects with mass towards one another -- the same force, for example, that causes a
ball thrown in the air to fall to the earth.

5. __________________________

Where do planets like Earth come from? Over billions of years, stars "cook" hydrogen and
helium atoms in their hot cores to make heavier elements like carbon and oxygen. Large
stars explode over time, blasting these elements into space. This matter then condenses into
the stars, planets, and satellites that make up solar systems like our own.

6. __________________________

Astrophysicists have uncovered a great deal of compelling proof over the past hundred
years to support the Big Bang theory. Among this evidence is the observation that the
universe is expanding. By looking at light emitted by distant galaxies, scientists have found
that these galaxies are rapidly moving away from our galaxy, the Milky Way. An explosion
like the Big Bang, which sent matter flying outward from a point, explains this observation.

Another critical discovery was the observation of low levels of

microwaves throughout space. Astronomers believe these
microwaves, whose temperature is about -270 degrees Celsius, are
the leftovers of the extremely high-temperature radiation produced
by the Big Bang.

Interestingly, astronomers can get an idea of how hot the universe

Did you know
used to be by looking at very distant clouds of gas through high-
that the static on
power telescopes. Because light from these clouds can take billions
your television is
of years to reach our telescopes, we see such bodies as they
caused by
appeared eons ago and these ancient clouds of gas clearly seem to
radiation left over
be hotter than younger clouds.
from the Big
Bang?
Scientists have also been able to uphold the Big Bang theory by
measuring the relative amounts of different elements in the
universe. They've found that the universe contains about 74 percent hydrogen and 26
percent helium by mass, the two lightest elements. All the other heavier elements -
including elements common on earth, such as carbon and oxygen - make up just a tiny trace
of all matter. So how does this prove anything about the Big Bang? Scientists have shown,
using theoretical calculations, that these abundances could only have been made in a
universe that began in a very hot, dense state, and then quickly cooled and expanded. This
is exactly the kind of universe that the Big Bang theory predicts.
7. __________________________

In the first few minutes after the Big Bang, the universe was far hotter - billions of billions
of billions of degrees hotter - than anywhere in the universe today. This heat gave particles
of matter in the early universe an extraordinary amount of energy, causing them to behave
in a much different way from particles in the universe today. For example, particles moved
much faster back then and collided into one another with much greater energy. If these
conditions do not exist anymore, how do scientists study the behaviour of matter in the
early universe? One of the most powerful tools for such analysis is the particle accelerator.
This device allows physicists to recreate conditions just after the Big Bang by making a
beam of fast-moving particles and bringing them together in very high-energy collisions.
Researchers at CERN are using an accelerator called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to
accelerate subatomic particles called protons to close to the speed of light. This is how fast
scientists believed these particles moved in the instants after the Big Bang. By looking at
the behaviour of these protons, CERN physicists hope to better understand how the Big
Bang created the universe. The tunnel that houses the accelerator ring of the LHC is
probably CERN’s most distinctive feature. Measuring 27 km in circumference, much of the
ring exists under land in France, while the majority of CERN’s other facilities are in
Switzerland. Scientists need such a large ring in order to accelerate particles to the
enormous levels of energy required in some experiments. The underlying principles are
similar to those in a linear accelerator. But with machines like the LHC, scientists can
accelerate the particles as far as needed by just making them "run laps" around the ring.

8. __________________________

The Big Bang theory raises some important questions

photo: CERN
When completed in 2005, the
LHC at CERN will provide
new insight into the past,
present and future of our
universe.
about the fundamental nature of the universe: Will the
expansion of the universe, set in action by the Big
Bang, continue forever? Or will gravity stop the
expansion and eventually cause all the matter in the
universe to contract in a Big Crunch? Scientists don't
yet know the answers to these questions for certain. But
particle physics experiments like the accelerator studies
at CERN may offer some clues down the road. By
probing into what matter is made of and how it behaves,
such experiments can help us explore what the matter in
our universe -the planets, stars, and galaxies -might be
doing billions of years from now.

Adapted from: http://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/cern/ideas/bang2.html

 SKIMMING NAME: SECTION:
Duration: 12 minutes

 This part of the exam aims to test your ability to locate main ideas in a text.

 Which paragraphs (1-8) match with the following headings (A-I)? Write the paragraph
number beside the correct heading. The headings are not in the same order as the
information in the text. One of the answers is given as an example.

 There are more headings than paragraphs.

 Each question is worth 1 point.

Heading Paragraph Number

A. The creation of galaxies 4

B. How the universe began _____________

C. A cooling, expanding universe _____________

D. Recreating the Big Bang _____________

E. Characteristics of the Big Bang _____________

F. Planetary formation _____________

G. Temperature Variations _____________

H. How do we know the Big Bang happened? _____________

I. What is the fate of the universe? _____________

TOTAL: _________/ 7
CAREFUL READING NAME: SECTION:

Answer the following questions with information from the text. The questions are in the same
order as the information in the text. Duration: 35 minutes

1. What are three unique qualities of the Big Bang?

(i) _____________________________________________________________

(ii) _____________________________________________________________

(iii) _____________________________________________________________
(3 points)

2. Why do scientists believe that only the most basic particles existed just after the Big Bang?

___________________________________________________________________
(1 point)

3. How did the universe cool down?

__________________________________________________________________
(1 point)

Complete the following. An example is given.

protons and Example:(= → 4.____________________ → plus electrons →

neutrons (=hydrogen and helium)

→ complete atoms → clouds of gas →

5.___________________________
(= collections of stars)

→. hydrogen and helium atoms cook in the stars → 6.___________________

(e.g., carbon and oxygen)

→ large stars explode → matter condenses into

7._______________, 8._________________ and

9.___________________ (= solar systems)

(3 points)
10. What are three discoveries which scientists believe support the Big Bang theory?

(i) ______________________________________________________________

(ii) _______________________________________________________________

(iii) _______________________________________________________________

(3 points)

11. Because of ___________________________, particles in the early universe moved much

faster and with more energy.
(1 point)

12. What are scientists using to recreate the conditions which existed just after the Big Bang?

_______________________________________________________________

(1 point)

13. What are two possible futures awaiting the universe?

i) _______________________________________________________________

iii) _______________________________________________________________

(2 points)

TOTAL: / 15