What is it?
Cosmology is the study of the origin of The Universe. The prevailing theory is the Big Bang which puts the age of The
Universe at 10 to 15 billion years (billion = 109). The most common questions are 1)
What was there before the Big Bang? and 2) How will The Universe end? Well no-one knows for sure, but the answer to the first question is either nothing or the question is meaningless as time only
began at the Big Bang. It is quite possible that there are many universes coming into existence and going out again - all within their own set of dimensions including time - we can never
know. The fate of the Universe depends upon its mass. From the known current rate of expansion, if there is enough mass, the expansion will slow to zero; slightly more and it will contract and
annihilate itself in a big crunch; a little less and it will continue to expand forever and space will become more empty and darker.
The Science/ Technology
The discovery of the background microwave radiation of The Universe (equivalent to the black body radiation of 3o Kelvin) by Bell Laboratories workers in
the 1960s caused the Big Bang theory to become the generally accepted explanation. Mathematically, The Universe began with a singularity - a dimensionless point. Mathematic
projections can be made forwards or backwards to within just a tiny fraction of a second after the beginning. A problem was the explanation of the clumpiness of
the present Universe - there are huge strings of clusters of galaxies with massive gaps between them. A recent space experiment called COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) was able to show
that there are in fact minute variations in what was previously seen as completely uniform background radiation. This meant that clumpiness existed from almost the beginning of The Universe.
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