THE BEGINNING OF THE

UNIVERSE

Sheena V. Borjal
College of Science
Polytechnic University of the Philippines
Let’s start with the basics..

• The SOLAR SYSTEM consists of

our star, the Sun, and its orbiting
planets (including Earth), along
with numerous moons, asteroids,
comet material, rocks and dust.
• Our Sun is just one star among the hundreds
of billions of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy.

• The Milky Way Galaxy has 200- 400 billion

stars. Galaxies come in many sizes. The Milky
Way is big, but some galaxies, like our
Andromeda Galaxy neighbor, are much larger.

• The universe is all of galaxies-- billions of

them!
• NASA's telescopes allow us to study
galaxies beyond our own in exquisite
detail, and to explore the most distant
reaches of the observable universe. The
Hubble Space Telescope made one of the
deepest images of the universe, called the
Hubble Extreme Deep Field.
The Hubble Extreme Deep Field
• You are one of the billions of people on
our Earth. Our Earth orbits the sun in our
Solar System. Our sun is one star among
the billions in the Milky Way Galaxy. Our
Milky Way Galaxy is one among the
billions of galaxies in our Universe.
EARLY VIEWS
ABOUT THE
UNIVERSE
PLATO
• Argued that the heavens
were perfect
• Concluded that all motion
in the heavens must be
made up of combinations of
circles turning at uniform
rates. This idea was called
UNIFORM CIRCULAR
MOTION.
 ARISTOTLE
• Argued that the Earth was
imperfect and lay at the
center of the universe
• GEOCENTRIC UNIVERSE
• Ancient astronomers believed that Earth
did not move because they saw no
parallax.
PARALLAX- the apparent motion of an
object because of the
motion of the observer.
• Uniformly rotating circles were key
elements of ancient astronomy.
CLAUDIUS PTOLEMY
• Created a mathematical
model of the Aristotelian
universe in which the
planet followed a small
circle called the EPICYCLE
that slid around a larger
circle called the DEFERENT.
• Wrote the book
Mathematical Syntaxis.
PTOLEMY’S GEOCENTRIC MODEL
• RETROGRADE MOTION- backward motion
of planets (east to west)

• Ptolemaic model of the universe was

geocentric and based on uniform circular
motions

• It was considered as the “standard model” of

the universe until the Copernican Revolution
 NICOLAUS COPERNICUS
• Proposed the
heliocentric model
of the universe (sun
being the center of
the universe)
• The sun is fixed and
all other spheres
revolve around the
Sun.
THE COPERNICAN REVOLUTION
GALILEO GALILEI
• Was the first to
meticulously report
telescope observations
of the sky to support
the Copernican Model
of the universe
 MAJOR DISCOVERIES OF
GALILEO
Moons of Jupiter (4 Galilean
Moons) Rings of Saturn
Surface structures on the moon
Sun spots
Phases of Venus (including “full”
Venus)
THE EVOLUTION
OF THE
UNIVERSE
COSMOLOGY is the study of the
universe on the very grandest
of scales, including its nature,
origin, evolution, and ultimate
destiny.
In the 1920s, unexpected observations about
the nature of light from distant galaxies set
astronomers on a path of discovery that
ultimately led to a scientific model of
Universe formation known as the Big Bang
Theory, and this idea has become the
foundation of scientific cosmology.
 Waves and the Doppler Effect
• WAVES are disturbances that transmit
energy from one point to another in
the form of periodic motions.
• We refer to the distance between
successive waves as the wavelength
and the number of waves that pass a
point in a given time interval as the
frequency.
• The change in frequency that happens
when a wave source moves is known as
the Doppler effect.
• Named after an Austrian physicist, C.J.
Doppler.
• Light energy also moves in the form of waves.
• The Doppler effect also applies to light but can
be noticed only if the light source moves very
fast, at least a few percent of the speed of light.
• RED SHIFT: If a light source moves away
from you, the light you see becomes
redder, as the light shifts to longer
wavelength or lower frequency.
• BLUE SHIFT: If the light source moves
away from you, the light you see becomes
bluer, as the light shifts to higher
frequency.
• In the 1920s, astronomers such as
Edwin P. Hubble, began to study the
wavelength of light produced by the
distant galaxies.
• Astronomers found that the light
coming to the Earth from distant
galaxies displayed a red shift, relative
to the light coming from nearby stars.
• The light from all distant galaxies,
regardless of their direction from
Earth, exhibits a red shift. In other
words, all distant galaxies are moving
rapidly away from us!
According to the Big Bang Theory, all
matter and energy― everything that
now constitutes the universe was
initially packed into an infinitesimally
small point, called a “singularity”
(Marshak, 2015).
• The Universe was so small, so dense and so
hot during the first instants of its existence
that it consisted entirely of energy―
atoms, or even the smallest subatomic
particles that make up atoms, could not
even exist.
• Within a few seconds of cooling, however,
H atoms could begin to form. And by the
time the Universe reached an age of 3
minutes, when its temperature had fallen
below 1 billion degrees and its diameter
had grown about 53 million km, H atoms
could fuse together to form He atoms.
• Eventually, the Universe cooled enough for
chemical bonds to bind atoms together in
molecules.
• As the universe expanded and cooled
further, atoms and molecules slowed down
and accumulated into patchy clouds called
nebulae.
• The earliest nebulae of the Universe
consisted almost entirely of H and He
gases.
 REFERENCES
• Marshak, Stephen (2015). Earth: Portrait of a Planet 5th Edition. New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
• Palen, Stacy, Laura Kay, Brad Smith and George Blumenthal (2015).
Understanding Our Universe 2nd Edition. New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, Inc.