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Big History Project
Course: Big History Project > Unit 2
Lesson 1: The Big Bang | 2.0- WATCH: Unit 2 Overview - The Big Bang
- ACTIVITY: Unit 2 Vocab Tracking
- WATCH: A Big History of Everything
- READ: Complexity and Thresholds
- WATCH: Threshold 1 —The Big Bang
- ACTIVITY: This Threshold Today
- WATCH: Questions About the Big Bang
- ACTIVITY: Threshold Card — Threshold 1 The Big Bang
- Quiz: The Big Bang
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ACTIVITY: This Threshold Today
Purpose
In this activity, you will read news articles that reveal unexpected connections between today’s world and the Big Bang to understand how things we learn today are related to what we know about the Big Bang. Understanding the relevance to today should help you engage more with the theories related to the Big Bang, which are sometimes tricky.
Process
Out of the Big Bang came everything in the Universe. All of the matter that formed Earth, all of the materials that formed the stars and galaxies that light up the night sky, and all of the building blocks for everything in the Universe were once contained in a tiny singularity. Even space and time as we know them emerged from the Big Bang. All of these details help to explain why the Big Bang is considered the first “new complexity” in the Universe and the first major threshold of increasing complexity in this course. Scientists, along with the rest of us, continue to learn more about the Big Bang and how our Universe formed.
You can join in this process of discovery by searching for news stories about the Big Bang and the history of our Universe. Use some of the suggested articles below, or find ones on your own that highlight new information that you think contributes to a discussion of the Big Bang today. Be sure to carefully evaluate the articles you choose by thinking about the credibility of the authors and of the websites you have chosen:
Here are a couple of places to get started with your research:
For Further Discussion
Share a link to one of the news articles you found in the Questions Area below. Tell us what about the article interests you and how it connects the present day to the Big Bang.
Want to join the conversation?
- Why is that last part on the picture called "dark" energy and not "light" energy or something else?(4 votes)
- It is called dark energy because we don't know what it actually is. Our knowledge of it is still 'in the dark' in a manner of speaking. The same goes with dark matter.(4 votes)
- http://thewestsidestory.net/2014/09/23/17274/big-bang-theory-support-study-faces-criticism-physicists-premature-nature/
This is pretty interesting. It shows that people were all excited about "proof" of the big bang, and there was even talk of these guys winning a nobel prize, and then some other physicists came along and pointed out some things that the original guys didn't take into account when sharing their evidence. Obviously there is still a healthy debate about the big bang and people in the scienfici community are still really focused on it.(5 votes)- a great example about how science works!(4 votes)
- What are the "Dark Ages" mentioned in the picture?(2 votes)
- That is the time before stars began to form.(6 votes)
- http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/486596/Earth-like-planet-discovered-that-could-support-life
its not one of the links they provided, but i am not signing up for that.
I think it's neat that they might have found a new planet. It would be cool to go to another planet one day(3 votes) - Even space and time as we know them emerged from the Big Bang.
__________________________________---- Typo?(1 vote) - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jwsts-first-glimpses-of-early-galaxies-could-break-cosmology/
I find this site very interesting because of the new satellite that they talk about. How this connects to the Big Bang is that they have made this satellite to look back in time, to when the first galaxies formed.(1 vote) - It is called dark energy because we don't know what it actually is. Our knowledge of it is still 'in the dark' in a manner of speaking. The same goes with dark matter.(1 vote)