![]() It was still too hot for electrons to “settle down” and become associated with a particular nucleus such free electrons are especially effective at scattering photons, thus ensuring that no radiation ever got very far in the early universe without having its path changed. It remained hot and opaque, with radiation being scattered from one particle to another. The universe then continued to resemble the interior of a star in some ways for a few hundred thousand years more. The fusion of helium and lithium was completed when the universe was about 4 minutes old. To find out what this milestone was, let’s look at what theory tells us about what happened during the first few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang. Scientists have directly observed what the universe was like at this early stage, and these observations offer some of the strongest support for the Big Bang theory. What predictions does it make? And do observations show those predictions to be accurate? One success of the theory of the first few minutes of the universe is the correct prediction of the amount of helium in the universe.Īnother prediction is that a significant milestone in the history of the universe occurred about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. It is crucial, however, that a scientific theory should be testable. The description of the first few minutes of the universe is based on theoretical calculations. Summarize our current knowledge of the basic properties of the universe including its age and contents.Describe open, flat, and curved universes and explain which type of universe is supported by observations.Discuss the properties of this afterglow as we see it today, including its average temperature and the size of its temperature fluctuations.Explain why we can observe the afterglow of the hot, early universe.\)īy the end of this section, you will be able to:
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