The amazing Universe I

^{The article is a page long, but if you don’t feel like reading, you can watch it on video at the bottom of the page.}

Bonfires of San Juan

The evening was a happy one. It was early summer. Excitement was brimming outwards from within us. A group of teenagers were heading for the beach. It was the day of the patron saint of my town. We had packed everything we needed to have dinner outdoors. When we arrived, we sat very close to the sea, on the sand. While some were gathering firewood, others were preparing dinner. Not far away there were also other bonfires and younger people. The lampposts were a bit far away and the light from the campfires could be seen as scattered dots in the distance; we could hardly see our faces, but everyone was happy. For a moment I looked up and was fascinated by what I saw. It was the stars, it was the Milky Way. In the distance I could hear an orchestra, but I was trapped in that glimpse of the Universe. It was marvellous and I was ecstatic to admire it.

For a moment I turned my gaze to a firework casing rising into the night sky, illuminating it. It had exploded from the centre and I watched as the coloured lights sphere away towards the far ends. For a moment I thought of the Big Bang, but then gravity pulled anything that had gone out into the atmosphere down to the ground.

I don’t know for sure (though no one does), but it is perhaps how I imagine it. My fascinated gaze had been captivated. And I began to reflect. I looked at the galaxy, but it was like any other. I had been told that there were billions of stars and a whole bunch of other planets, and in the centre a Black Hole. I had also been told that there were billions of galaxies. It made me think about how insignificant our planet was and I saw how small it was, how tiny those of us around the campfire were. And I reflected… And I continued.

Milky Way from the Earth

As it exploded the energy surged, perhaps it had been like the casing of the fireworks. The temperature was immeasurable, beyond any kind of imagination. As that immense energy began, space and therefore time appeared. But there came a moment when little by little, far from its genesis, the energy began to cool. The closer to the explosion the hotter, the further away the colder. Space was being created as it progressed. Once a certain distance was reached, the energy cooled and condensed… and the foundations of the new universe began to appear.

As it cooled, tiny vibrating strings manifested themselves, still energy but the basis that would later become matter. Then particles, gas, dust, and finally hydrogen (the primordial gas) appeared. Gravity created huge stars that generated new chemical elements; first the gases, then the heavy elements. At one point the star exploded and scattered all its ‘dust’ into space. Cosmic microwave background radiation appeared. The cosmic phenomena pushed each one in a different direction. It was not homogeneous, synchronicity did not appear in it, and there were no significant coincidences. Entropy roamed freely (the disorder of the System). The random structure of the Universe eventually tended towards homogeneity. Hubble discovered expansion by observing the separation between galaxies. And all of these things are being studied by scientists today. There have been several space telescopes that are helping them to understand. We also have the machines to see and report, and the scientists to observe and decide. But the more they see, the more questions they ask.

Link to the second part: The amazing Universe II

Until the next reflection.

English and Spanish subtitles

Joan-Llorenç sincristal@hotmail.com