dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd) (01/03/86)
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