The Picture of the Universe

BY MEHWISH ABDUL REHMAN

Questions??
1- What do we know about universe, and how do we know it ?
2-Where did the universe come from and where is it going?
3-Did the universe have a beginning , and if so, what happened
before then?
4-What is the nature of time?
5-Will it come to an end?
MODELS OF THE UNIVERSE:-

� Geocentric model
� Heliocentric model
� Static universe
� Einstein universe
� Steady state universe
� Big band model
 Geocentric model:
An initial version of the geocentric model was presented by Eudoxus of Cnidus (c.400 –
350 BC, a Greek astronomer and mathematician born in present-day Turkey), and was
followed by successive modifications.
One of its revisions was proposed by Aristotle (384-322 BC), who demonstrated that
the Earth was a sphere. He arrived at this conclusion after observing the shadow cast
during a lunar eclipse. He also calculated the size of the Earth – at 50% larger than it
really is. Aristotle’s geocentric model consisted of 49 concentric spheres which he
believed could account for the movements of all of the celestial bodies. The most
external sphere was that of the fixed stars, which controlled the behaviour of the inner
spheres. The starry sphere, in turn, was controlled by a supernatural mover (entity).
The Greek geocentric model underwent further revisions. Eratosthenes (276-194 BC,
Greek writer, born in present-day Libya) used an experimental method to measure the
circumference of the Earth, which he overestimated
Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolomeus, 2nd Century BC, Egyptian astronomer and geographer)
revised Aristotle’s model by introducing epicycles, a model in which the planets swivel in
smaller circles as they orbit the Earth
 The heliocentric model:-
The idea that the Sun is at the centre of the universe and that the Earth revolves around it, known as the
heliocentric theory, was first proposed by Aristarchus of Samos (320 -350 BC, Greek mathematician and
astronomer), who arrived at the notion based on his estimates of the sizes and distances of the Sun and
the Moon. He concluded that the Earth revolves around the Sun and that the stars compose a fixed and
very distant sphere. His theory attracted little attention, mainly because it contradicted the geocentric
theory of Aristotle, then held in the highest prestige, and because the very idea of the Earth moving about
was not particularly appealing.

About two thousand years later, in 1510, Copernicus (Nicolaus Copernicus, 1473 -1543, Polish
astronomer) set down his own heliocentric model in the work Commentariolus, which circulated
anonymously; Copernicus seemed to have foreseen the furore the theory would provoke and only
allowed it to be published after his death. The work was brought out openly for the first time in 1543
under the title De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelesti, and carried a dedication to Pope Paul III.
After the publication of Copernicus’ theory, however, certain technological and scientific advances rendered
it clearly superior to the Ptolemaic system. Tycho Brahe (1546-1601, a Danish astronomer) played an
important role in advancing instrument-based techniques for making precise measurements with the naked
eye, as refracting glasses and telescopes had not yet been invented. These measurements were roughly ten
times more precise than earlier calculations.

In 1597 Brahe moved to Prague, where he hired Johannes Kepler (1571-1630, German mathematician and
astronomer) as his assistant. Later, Kepler was to use Tycho’s measurements to establish his laws of
planetary motion. These laws showed that the planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus.
With this realization, theoretical calculations and measurements acquired much greater congruity than under
the older system.

In developing the telescope, Galileo created an instrument of vital importance to astronomical research, as it
lends extraordinary powers of magnification to the human eye. When he trained his telescope at the Sun, he
discovered sunspots; when he focused on Jupiter, he discovered its first four moons; turning to the Milky
Way, he revealed that it was composed of myriad stars
Newton’s Theory :-

� It encapsulates the idea that all the particles of matter in the universe attract each other
through the force of gravity – Newton's law tells us how strong that attraction is. The
equation says that the force (F) between two objects is proportional to the product of their
masses (m1 and m2), divided by the square of the distance between them. The remaining
term in the equation, G, is the gravitational constant, which has to be measured by
experiment and, as of 2007, US scientists have measured it at 6.693 × 10−11 cubic metres
per kilogram second squared.
⮚ Newton's law of gravitation is simple equation, but devastatingly effective: plug in
the numbers and you can predict the positions of all the planets, moons and comets
you might ever want to watch, anywhere in the solar system and beyond.

⮚ And it allowed us to add to those celestial bodies too, heralding the space age.
Newton's formula helped engineers work out how much energy we needed to break
the gravitational bonds of Earth.

⮚ The path of every astronaut and the orbit of every satellite from which we benefit –
whether for communications, Earth observation, scientific research around Earth or
other planets, global positioning information – was calculated using this simple
formula.
The discovery of Galaxy:

One of the first consistent conceptions of the nature of the galaxy – and surprisingly accurate at that – was made by
Kant (Immanuel Kant, German philosopher, 1724-1808), who, at the age of only 26 and thus long before he was to
make his name in philosophy, came into contact with Newtonian thought and developed the idea that the solar
system had originated from the condensing of a gas disk. He also formulated the notion that the solar system
belongs to a much larger, compressed structure – what we call a “galaxy” today – and that the many nebulae then
observed as diffuse stains were in fact similar systems, which he called “island universes”.

The most important observational advances in terms of a more detailed understanding of the distribution of the stars
were made by Wilhelm Herschel (1738-1822, German-born English astronomer and musician), the first to build
large telescopes capable of viewing the fainter objects of the Heavens with more precision. Stars are both scattered
throughout space and grouped into so-called clusters. Studying these clusters, Herschel found that the stars were not
randomly distributed, but that they followed a certain configuration (which we now call galaxies) discernable to the
naked eye, just like the Milky Way.
 STATIC AND EINSTEIN UNIVERSE:-

� A static universe, also referred to as a 'stationary' or 'infinite' or 'static infinite'

universe, is a cosmological model in which the universe is both spatially infinite
and temporally infinite, and space is neither expanding nor contracting. Such a
universe does not have so-called spatial curvature; that is to say that it is 'flat' or
Euclidean. A static infinite universe was first proposed by Thomas Digges (1546–
1595).
� During 1917, Albert Einstein added a positive cosmological constant to his
equations of general relativity to counteract the attractive effects of gravity on
ordinary matter, which would otherwise cause a static, spatially finite universe to
either collapse or expand forever. This model of the universe became known as the
Einstein World or Einstein's static universe.
The physicist J.A. Wheeler stated:

"Matter tells space-time how to curve.

Space-time tells matter how to move."
METRIC
THEORY
 Steady State Theory:-

In cosmology, a view that the universe is always expanding but maintaining a constant average
density, with matter being continuously created to form new stars and galaxies at the same rate that old
ones become unobservable as a consequence of their increasing distance and velocity of recession. A
steady-state universe has no beginning or end in time, and from any point within it the view on the
grand scale—i.e., the average density and arrangement of galaxies—is the same. Galaxies of all
possible ages are intermingled.

The theory was first put forward in 1948 by British scientists Sir Hermann Bondi, Thomas Gold, and Sir
Fred Hoyle. It was further developed by Hoyle to deal with problems that had arisen in connection with
the alternative big-bang hypothesis. Observations since the 1950s (most notably, those of the cosmic
microwave background) have produced much evidence contradictory to the steady-state picture and have
led scientists to overwhelmingly support the big-bang model.
 The Big Bang Theory:-

In the 1920s, the American astronomer Edwin Hubble sought to establish a relationship between the distance of a
galaxy and the speed at which it is either approaching or moving away from our own. The speed of a galaxy can be
clocked with relative ease, but the distance requires a whole chain of tasks that makes it laborious and relatively
imprecise work. After painstaking research, Hubble identified a correlation between the distance and the speed of the
galaxies he was studying. The more distant the galaxy, the greater its

Let’s imagine for an instant that someone blows into the balloon and makes it expand. What will the
astronomer-ant see? Basically, he will see that the galaxies closest to him recede slowly while those more
distant shuttle away at a faster speed. This ant will have discovered Hubble’s Law. If we imagine the opposite -
that instead of expanding, the balloon begins to deflate-, what the ant will see is all of the galaxies edging closer
to each other – the opposite of Hubble’s Law.

What the law proves, therefore, is that our universe is in expansion! In other words, it will be larger in the future
and it was smaller in the past. The further back in the past, the smaller the universe. If we follow the logic
through, we can imagine a balloon so small that it shrinks to a mere pinhead.
 From this initial pinhead we need not stretch the imagination to arrive at the idea that
the universe started with an explosion – the so-called Big Bang - and that it has been
expanding ever since, as Hubble’s Law confirms. So how long ago did this happen? The
most recent estimates put the Big Bang at 13.7 (±0.2) billion years ago.

Indeed, theoretical work from 1927 by the Belgian abbot Georges Lemaitre shows that
Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity is actually compatible with the recession
of the nebulae (as galaxies were called back then) and he was the first to suggest that the
universe had originated from an explosion, from a “primeval atom”.
 Two assumptions for big bang :-
The big-bang model is based on two assumptions.

The first is that Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity correctly describes the
gravitational interaction of all matter.

The second assumption, called the cosmological principle, states that an observer’s
view of the universe depends neither on the direction in which he looks nor on his
location. This principle applies only to the large-scale properties of the universe, but
it does imply that the universe has no edge, so that the big-bang origin occurred not at
a particular point in space but rather throughout space at the same time.
General theory of relativity:-
2-cosmological principle:-
this principle based upon two assumptions.
1- homogeneity
2-isotropy

Isotropy applies at some specific point in the manifold, and states that the space looks
the same no matter in what direction you look.

Homogeneity is the statement that the metric is the same throughout the manifold.
In other words, given any two points p and q in M, there is an isometry that takes p
into q
FLRW METRIC :-
Another Representation :-
 Confirmation of Big Bang:-

In the late 1940s, the astronomer George Gamow suggested that the initial explosion may have left some still
observable traces. His reckoning was that a universe so hot and dense would have emitted a lot of light. With
expansion, the characteristic temperature of this light would have dropped. According to simple calculations,
perhaps it was still observable today in microwave radiation, with a temperature of some 5 kelvins.

In 1965, two engineers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, were trying to find the source of an electromagnetic
noise that was disrupting the reception of a transmissions system they were testing. They discovered that the static
continued no matter where they pointed the antenna. When they measured the radiation, they found a value close
to that expected for cosmic background radiation, 2.7 kelvins (close to absolute zero).

It was confirmation of the Big Bang theory and the discovery earned Penzias and Wilson the Nobel Prize for
Physics in 1978.
COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer):-

� The Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite was launched in 1989, twenty five
years after the discovery of the microwave background radiation in 1964.
� In spectacular fashion in 1992, the COBE team announced that they had discovered
“ripples at the edge of the universe”, that is, the first sign of primordial fluctuations at
380,000 years after the Big Bang. These are the imprint of the seeds of galaxy formation.
� These appear as temperature variations on the full sky map that COBE obtained (shown
below). Red areas represent areas with slightly higher temperatures and blue areas a
slightly lower temperature than the mean
WMAP (Wikinson Anisotropy Probe) :-

� Analyses of a new high-resolution map of microwave light emitted only 380,000 years
after the Big Bang (pictured above) appear to define our universe more precisely than ever
before.
� The results from the orbiting Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe resolve several
long-standing disagreements in cosmology rooted in less precise data. Specifically, present
analyses of the WMAP all-sky map indicate that the universe is 13.7 billion years old
(accurate to 1 percent), composed of 73 percent "dark energy", 23 percent cold dark matter,
and only 4 percent atoms, is currently expanding at the rate of 71 km/sec/Mpc (accurate to
5 percent), underwent episodes of rapid expansion called inflation, and will expand
forever.
� This new experimental data provides a dramatic and direct confirmation of the Hot Big
Bang model.
 Big Bang: ( t=0s)

⮚ Extrapolation of the expansion of the Universe backwards in time using

general relativity yields an infinite density and temperature at a finite
time in the past.
⮚ This singularity signals the breakdown of GR. How closely we can
extrapolate towards the singularity is debated — certainly not earlier
than the Planck epoch.
⮚ The early hot, dense phase is itself referred to as “the Big Bang”, and is
considered the “birth” of our Universe — The Beginning.
 The Planck’s Epoch: (0< t< 10-43)

⮚ The Planck epoch is the earliest period of time in the history of the
Universe, spanning the brief time immediately following the Big Bang
during which the quantum effects of gravity were significant.
⮚ In order to compute the time-scale over which quantum effects
dominate (barring the existence of branes which would circumvent
them), we use dimensional analysis:
If the super symmetry is correct, then during this time the four fundamental
forces
▪ electromagnetism,
▪ weak force,
▪ strong force
▪ and gravity
▪ all have the same strength, so they are possibly unified into one
fundamental force
 Grand Unification Epoch: 10-43s <t< 10-36s

⮚ If the grand unification energy is taken to be 1015 GeV, this

corresponds to temperatures higher than 1027 K.

⮚ During this period, three of the four fundamental interactions

▪ electromagnetism,
▪ the strong interaction,
▪ and the weak interaction — were unified as the electronuclear force.

⮚ Gravity had separated from the electronuclear force at the end of the
Planck era.
 Inflationary Epoch: 10-36< t<10-32

⮚ The Inflationary Epoch was the period in the evolution of the early
Universe when, according to inflation theory, the Universe underwent an
extremely rapid exponential expansion.

⮚ This rapid expansion increased the linear dimensions of the early

Universe by a factor of at least 1026 (and possibly a much larger factor),
and so increased its volume by a factor of at least 1078.

⮚ At this time, the strong force started to separate from the electroweak
interaction.
 Electroweak Epoch: 10−32s ≤ t ≤ 10−12s

⮚ At approximately 10−32s after the Big Bang the potential energy of the inflation
field that had driven the inflation of the Universe during the Inflationary Epoch was
released, filling the Universe with a dense, hot quark-gluon plasma (reheating).

⮚ Particle interactions in this phase were energetic enough to create large numbers of
exotic particles, including W and Z bosons and Higgs bosons.

⮚ As the Universe expanded and cooled, interactions became less energetic and when
the Universe was about 10−12s old, W and Z bosons ceased to be created. The
remaining W and Z bosons decayed quickly, and the weak interaction became a
short-range force in the following Quark Epoch.
 Quark Epoch: 10−12s ≤ t ≤ 10−6s
⮚ The Quark Epoch was the period in the evolution of the early Universe when the
fundamental interactions of gravitation, electromagnetism, the strong interaction
and the weak interaction had taken their present forms, but the temperature of the
Universe was still too high to allow quarks to bind together to form hadrons.

⮚ During the Quark Epoch the Universe was filled with a dense, hot quark-gluon
plasma, containing quarks, gluons and leptons. Collisions between particles were
too energetic to allow quarks to combine into mesons or baryons.
Hadron Epoch: 10−6s ≤ t ≤ 1 s

⮚ It started approximately 10−6s after the Big Bang, when the temperature of the
Universe had fallen sufficiently to allow the quarks from the preceding Quark
Epoch to bind together into hadrons.

⮚ Initially, the temperature was high enough to allow the creation of hadron/anti-
hadron pairs, which kept matter and anti-matter in thermal equilibrium. However,
as the temperature of the Universe continued to fall, hadron/anti-hadron pairs were
no longer produced.

⮚ Most of the hadrons and anti-hadrons were then eliminated in annihilation

reactions, leaving a small residue of hadrons.
 Lepton Epoch: 1 s ≤ t ≤ 3 min
From the time tP of quantum gravity up to the lepton era, the physics of the
Universe is dominated by very high temperatures (> 1012 K) and therefore
by high-energy particle physics.
 Big Bang Nucleo-synthesis :-

� Nuclear equilibrium :
� For temperatures greater or of the order of 100Mev, the universe is dominated
 by relativistic 
particles in equilibrium: electrons, positrons, neutrinos and photons.
�  The contribution from  non‐relativistic particle can be neglected;
�  the weak interactions between neutrons, protons and  leptons: 
 THE DARK AGE:
• At very high z, the universe was practically homogeneous, and the temperature of
matter and radiation dropped as the universe expanded. Atoms formed at z = 1100
when the temperature was T = 3000 K, a low enough value for the plasma to
recombine.
• At this epoch of recombination, the CMB filled the universe with a red, uniformly
bright glow of blackbody radiation, but later the temperature dropped and the CMB
shifted to the infrared. To human eyes, the universe would then have appeared as a
completely dark place. A long period of time had to pass until the first objects
collapsed, forming the first stars that shone in the universe with the first light ever
emitted that was not part of the CMB .
• The period of time between the last scattering of the CMB radiation by the
homogeneous plasma and the formation of the first star has come to be known as the
Dark Age of the universe
• Overview of the main events discussed in this review, with the top axis showing the age
of the universe and the bottom axis the corresponding redshift, for the currently favored
model .

• Blue represents atomic regions, and red, ionized regions. Matter in the universe
recombined in a homogeneous manner at z =1200.

• Later, when the first stars formed and emitted ionizing radiation, ionized regions formed
around the sources that eventually overlapped, filling all of space.

• The size of the HII regions should be much smaller on the redshift scale than shown
here and is drawn only for illustration.
FIRST STAR FORMATION :

� The most important effect that the formation of stars had on their
environment is the re-ionization of the gas in the universe.
� Even though the baryonic matter combined into atoms at z = 1100,
the intergalactic matter must have been re-ionized before the
present.
❑ shows that the gas density increases over twenty orders of magnitude from a diffuse
gas to a proto-star, whereas the temperature increases only by a factor of about ten.
The thermal evolution can be described in terms of physical processes as follows.
❑ The collected primordial gas in a small dark halo first cools by molecular hydrogen
cooling to a temperature of a few hundred Kelvin.
❑ A sufficient amount of molecular gas is accumulated at the halo center, and the
gravitational Jeans instability sets in when the particle number density reaches n=10 4
cm-3),20) At lower densities, the molecular cooling rate is proportional to the density
squared, because hydrogen molecules can be rotationally excited by two-body
impacts with other atoms and molecules.
❑ At n =104cm-3 the level population of hydrogen molecules is set by the local
thermodynamic equilibrium, rather than by collisional excitation and the subsequent
radiative de-excitation, and then the molecular hydrogen cooling rate saturates. The
characteristic mass of the cloud at this density is given by the Jeans mass:
 The cloud thereafter undergoes run-away collapse. In the contracting gas cloud core, a series of thermal and

❑ chemical processes operate to keep the temperature roughly constant at around 1000 Kelvin, while the
density continues increasing. Rapid three-body reactions convert almost all of the hydrogen atoms to
molecules at a density of n =1010cm-3) When the central density reaches n 9 1018cm!3, the gas
becomes optically thick even to continuum radiation in infrared, and radiative processes cannot cool
the gas any more.
❑ Only one possible cooling mechanism is chemical cooling through the dissociation of hydrogen
molecules, but this cooling operates only temporarily until full-scale dissociation. Afterwards,
adiabatic contraction quickly heats the gas to above several thousand Kelvin. In the final phase, the
central core contracts very slowly owing to the increasing thermal pressure, and hydrodynamic shocks
are generated at the surface where supersonically in falling gas is suddenly stopped.
❑ A proto-star is formed at this moment. It has a small mass of about one percent of that of the Sun,
which should be compared with the cloud mass of about five hundred solar-masses (Equation [3]). The
central particle number density of the proto-star is 91021cm!3 and the post-shock temperature is higher
than 10,000 Kelvin.
 COSMIC RE-IONIZATION:

❑ The first generation of stars transform the Universe from a simple state
with darkness to a complex one, but with light and heavy elements.
❑ The first stars emit ultra-violet photons and ionize the surrounding
gas.) The inter-galactic medium (IGM) becomes a plasma from its
initially neutral state (after recombination), and it also becomes
warmed up.
❑ This process is called cosmic re-ionization, which is currently a
topical subject of numerous studies, both theoretical and observational
ones, in modern cosmology.
❑ Results of a simulation of the re-ionization of the intergalactic medium in a cubic box
of co-moving side 4 h1 Mpc, from (64) .
❑ The gas density (left panel), neutral fraction (central panel), and temperature (right
panel) from a slice of the simulation are shown.
❑ The color coded values indicate the logarithms of the gas density divided by the mean
baryon density, the neutral fraction, and the gas temperature in Kelvin, respectively.
The simulation is shown at z = 9.
❑ The pink regions in the central panel are atomic, and the green regions are ionized.
The sources of ionizing photons generally appear in halo centers where the gas density
is high, but once the photons escape from the local high-density regions, the ionized
bubbles expand most easily across the lowest density regions (compare left and central
panels).
❑ The ionized regions are heated to about 104 K (see right panel), and they grow with
time until they fill the entire universe at the end of re-ionization.
❑ Spectra of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey quasars J0019-0040 at z=4.32, and J11485251 at
z 6.37.The flux is shown in units of 10 17 erg cm2 s1 as a function of wavelength.

❑ The peak of the spectra is there d shifted broad Ly emission line of the quasars.
Absorption by intervening hydrogen is seen at shorter wavelengths. At redshifts below 6 (
850 nm), the medium is photo-ionized and the very small fraction of hydrogen that is
atomic produces a partial, strongly fluctuating absorption reflecting the density variations
of the intergalactic medium.

❑ At z =6, the absorption suddenly becomes complete. This probably indicates the end of
re-ionization . At z = 6, the medium still contained atomic patches that are highly opaque
to Ly photons, and, even in the re-ionized regions, the ionizing background intensity
was too low to reduce the neutral fraction to the very low values required for Ly
transmission.
FORMATION OF SOLAR SYSTEM:
The story of Earth starts in the Hadean Eon. If you could rewind time 4.6
billion years, Earth was almost unrecognizable. Asteroids and comets
repeatedly pelted Earth. Temperature was hot with lava flowing. It didn’t look
like the Blue Marble we’re all familiar with
Hadean :
From 4.6 to 4.0 billion years ago, the Hadean Eon is the first eon of Earth.
It’s key events are:
•HEAT SOURCE: Earth established a heat source with the sun.
•MAGNETIC FIELD: Convection currents produced a geo-dynamo. This was
the first step for life to persist on Earth.
•MOON FORMATION: The formation of our moon was key to stabilize our
climate.
Earth coalesced from a cloud of dust
into a planet

The core accretion model describes the

creation of our solar system. Solar winds
swept in hydrogen and helium closer to the
sun because they were smaller in size.
But the sun couldn’t pull in the heavier
elements. They spiralled and gelled together
into planets of their own. Earth coalesced
surrounding matter to form a sphere. The
heaviest material like iron and zinc sank to
the core. Finally, lighter material remained on
top to form a crust
A magnetic field forms:

GEODYNAMO: Because the solid inner

core heats the outer liquid layer, it
produces convection currents. This geo-
dynamo is Earth’s magnetic field.

In the Hadean Eon, Earth’s magnetic field

was just developing. It just started
deflecting solar winds making Earth more
habitable.
 Earth meet moon:

First, an object the size of Mars headed towards Earth.

At tremendous speed, it delivered a glancing blow to
Earth. It didn’t hit Earth directly. But it grazed the
side.
But Earth’s gravity was able to pull the moon into its
orbit. And the moon has remained orbiting Earth
ever since.
The formation of the moon had profound effects for
Earth’s climate. Not only did the moon slow down
Earth’s rotation, but the impact
tilted Earth on its axis.
This is when the Earth started to have seasons.
Because the moon stabilizes the Earth from wobbling,
Earth also developed a more balanced climate
Asteroids and comets pelted Earth

This is why scientists suggest that

comets may have transported water during
the late bombardment stage.

And what was the spark that built the

chemical building blocks for life? Scientists
are trying to recreate the collisions that took
place at this time. They are trying to
reconstruct the first chains of DNA.
Archean :
Proterozoic: Eukaryotes to Multicellular
Phanerozoic: Diversification of Life