How does the universe work?

Everything that we see around consists of simpleelements, including ourselves. But initially there was nothing: no matter, no radiation, no space, no time. How did we come here? What does the universe consist of? The veil of secrecy reveals the generally accepted to date cosmological model of the early universe - the Big Bang theory.

The Big Bang Theory

Because of the Big Bang about 14 billion yearsback from the smallest part of the universe was formed. In one thousandth of a second after the Big Bang, quarks and gluons (building blocks for larger particles) formed protons and neutrons. In one second, when cooling by a billion degrees, protons and neutrons formed atomic nuclei. Three minutes later, the first elements appeared - hydrogen, helium and lithium. When the electrons are entangled in atoms,

They no longer blocked the passage for light-bearing particles - photons.

Finally, everything was ordered, the universe becametransparent. Then the first stars appeared, everywhere the gas was condensed and heated, nuclear fusion began. From the clouds of hydrogen and helium, galaxies were formed, galaxies formed clusters, and cluster clusters - filaments (complexes of superclusters). Now the universe is about 50 billion galaxies.

Today, atoms make up most of the matterUniverse, but in space there is a lot of unknown, that we are just beginning to learn. Surprisingly, the harmoniously arranged Universe is fraught with mysterious matter. They are so unusual that scientists once doubted their existence.

According to modern ideas of astrophysicists,if you take all the matter in the universe for 100%, then 5% will be the ordinary, visible matter, which consists of stars, planets and you and me, 25% - dark matter and 70% - dark energy.

The Elusive Dark Matter

Dark matter is not just a mysterious quantity inspace, it is also the basis of our existence. Scientists believe that dark matter arose at the time of the Big Bang. It played an important role, helping ordinary matter to unite, forming stars and planets. Like the steel beams used

in construction, slow particles of dark matter played the role of scaffolding, to which ordinary matter was attached.

Dark matter does not reflect light, it does not absorbit does not distinguish it. Light just passes through it without any changes. A possible way to detect dark matter is to observe how it affects the objects surrounding it. Its particles are so huge in weight that they have a powerful effect on galaxies, how fast they rotate.

Powerful dark energy

What are the remaining 70%The universe? At one time, scientists were shocked by the discovery of a new mysterious dark energy, which plays a dominant role in space. This energy of gravitational repulsion leads to the dispersal of galaxies. Scientists have always believed that although the universe is expanding, it will eventually slow down or even come to a collapse, that the force of attraction will be stronger than the initial impulse.

However, by investigating the dynamics of the expansion of the universe,physicists were surprised to find that the expansion does not slow down - on the contrary, it accelerates! Dark energy separates galaxies, creating a scattering universe. And awful fate awaits all living beings: the temperature in the universe will fall so much that all reasonable forms of life will freeze. In a trillion years, the Earth will become a very lonely place - if we could look at the sky at that time, it would be absolutely black.

Dark energy and dark matter counteractto each other from the beginning of time. Physicists believe that they were both formed at the time of the Big Bang. The forces of attraction of dark matter limited the dark energy, slowing the expansion of the universe during the first nine billion years. The situation changed five billion years ago, when dark matter dispersed throughout the universe, and dark energy emerged from its attraction. Today, dark energy is the dominant force in our world.

At the moment, dark matter and dark energyremain the greatest mysteries of the cosmology of the 21st century. More information on this you can find out by watching the online popular science television series of the channel Discovery "How the Universe is arranged." In addition, you can see how the universe works, in the documentary television series "In the Universe with Stephen Hawking" and "Through the Wormhole" with Morgan Freeman, also produced by Discovery.

Despite many unsolved mysteries, withthe discovery of dark matter and dark energy, science is one step closer to a unified theory that will tell you how the universe works. And when we have such a theory, we will finally be able to answer the deep questions that have been plaguing the person since he first glanced at the heavens.