The big bang theory first came into being after Edwin Hubble discovered that all galaxies everywhere are rapidly moving away from one another. This means all matter most likely started off all in one place, before expanding rapidly in all directions. This point is called a singularity, where matter is compressed into infinite density in a space of zero size. Some people also believe there will be a corresponding big crunch when the universe collapses back in on itself.
Big bang Quotes in A Brief History of Time
The A Brief History of Time quotes below are all either spoken by Big bang or refer to Big bang. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 3
Quotes
Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention. (The Catholic Church, on the other hand, seized on the big bang model and in 1951 officially pronounced it to be in accordance with the Bible.)
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Chapter 8
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So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?
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Big bang Term Timeline in A Brief History of Time
The timeline below shows where the term Big bang appears in A Brief History of Time. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
Hubble’s discovery created the idea of the big bang , a time when the universe was tiny and infinitely dense before rapidly expanding. At...
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Chapter 3
...universe was infinitely dense and curved. Laws of science break down at this point. This big bang singularity means any previous events would not have any meaning to us now. In a...
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While the church liked the big bang model because it leaves room for God, many dislike the idea. Hermann Bondi, Thomas Gold,...
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Russian scientists Evgenii Lifshitz and Isaac Khalatnikov also tried to disprove the big bang . They said that as galaxies do not move directly away from each other, perhaps...
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...only talked about stars, a young Stephen Hawking saw the relevance this had for the big bang theory. After surviving longer than expected after being diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease, Hawking took...
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Chapter 4
...to other forces. But gravity would be much stronger in black holes or at the big bang , and as such needs to be integrated into quantum mechanics. Just as the idea...
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Chapter 6
...center of a black hole. This is similar to the beginning of time at the big bang , but is the end of time for that star, and anything else caught up...
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Chapter 7
Before 1970, Hawking’s work mainly focused on the big bang . Around the time of his daughter’s birth, he thought about black holes and their...
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Chapter 8
Einstein’s general relativity predicted that space-time began as a singularity in the big bang , and ends in the potential big crunch singularity when everything collapses back in on...
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...meetings, the Pope met with scientists, telling them not to enquire too deeply in the big bang , because it was the work of God. Hawking had just spoken on the topic...
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But first, one should understand the “hot big bang model.” This model is a Friedmann model, in which matter cools as the universe expands,...
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At the moment of the big bang , the universe would have been infinitely dense with zero size, and, as such, infinitely...
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One hundred seconds after the big bang , the universe’s temperature would be 1 billion degrees, meaning protons and neutrons could not...
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...be fairly sure their picture of the universe after the first few seconds following the big bang is accurate. After the first few hours, the production of new elements would have stopped,...
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...have so far break down at the singularity. We cannot know what happened before the big bang . This gives the universe a boundary—the start of time at the big bang.
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...questions, we need to know the make up of the early universe. In the hot big bang model, it seems there was not a uniform temperature in the early stages, as there...
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...rate of expansion. The energy would slowly decrease to the rate we see in the big bang model. One such region could be the observable universe.
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Chapter 12
...relativity states there must have been a point of infinite density at the beginning, the big bang . The universe would return to such a point in a big crunch. The theory...
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