This all was going on about 13,700,000,000 million years ago...

The time was already here - or was it? Perhaps the time and all the "dark stuff" we know to be around somewhere was here even much earlier.  The science to discover the why's for this type of problems is starved from funding - while in contrast, our political and religious establishments live lavishly in their forever youthful fantasies of holding the supreme power on this tiny planet and even the almighty universe around.  This sacrosanct connection between the State and Religion was expressed well by late Voltaire (1694 - 1778) when he said: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him."   The "enthusiastic" support of the US government to the basic higher R&D was highlighted in the 2006.  From the US$ 2,400 billion budget a full US$ 9 billion was added to spending for education and R&D.  A leading industry representative highlighted this overly "generous" support for the Nation by pointing out that it fits easily inside the rounding errors of the the 2006 budget (Jan-FT).  With this type of support it will take no more than a decade for the USA to loose it's already severely weakened position as a technology leader in the world. 

(10^-43) seconds later

Anyhow, for a still unknown reason, an incomprehensible amount of energy was released in an instant some 13,7 Billion years ago. This triggered a chain reaction with far reaching consequences.   Supporting data for an immense explosion at this time is derived from the cosmic microwave background radiation that left measurable traces of minute temperature variations over the entire sky still remaining after the impact of galaxies and whatever is out there have been deducted from between us and the background.  The measurements are not yet that detailed and more time with better tools are needed - but we are progressing.  What was before the Big Bang if anything remains unanswered!  What actually happened during this first known universal definable time period is the easiest thing in the universe to explain: we have not even the slightest idea.  We do not even know if there was a time or space before this specific explosion. 

What else may have happened before?  It would be funny if it would not be serious, that everything that we can see or detect with our current instruments adds up only to about 5% of everything that must be there if the laws of our physics have any value.  The rest, or 95%, is elusive or just transparent to our current know-how, we do not yet even know what and how should we be searching for it.  We are though theorizing starting from our 5% knowledge base, that 25% of the missing stuff in the universe is in form of some kind of material that has a mass, a "dark material", and then we believe that the remaining 70% must be some kind of energy, a "dark energy" .   A brave conclusion indeed when one starts from 5%, that is almost nothing at all! 

There is now a new theory related to the supernovas and a possibility that they actually make our universe to resemble Swiss cheese.  With this the prevailing assumptions of relatively evenly filled universe requiring the 95% more mass would be replaced with something that resembles more like a porous sponge where high material concentrations are altering randomly with totally empty spaces where the most recent supernovas had exploded.  This theory may actually explain a huge portion if not all of that that 95% and still at the same time keep our currently known physics intact.

(10^-35) seconds from the beginning

The temperature had cooled down to 10^27 Kelvin (K) starting from something incomprehensible during the previous period.  Temperature is important, as it relates to energy density and the probability of existence of  any mass or on layman's terms something that can be touched.  But for now everything was just a singularity, where the so far known four forces of the nature: gravity, strong nuclear, weak nuclear and electromagnetism were just one thing.  

If we still do not know the majority or 95% of it all, perhaps we are missing a few more forces too.   Anyhow, at the end of this era the strong force condenses or freezes out like water vapor on a cold surface.  The strong force is important as it somehow keeps the nucleus of an atom from breaking down to peaces.  If this force would not exist the atoms could never form as the similarly charged particles would just fly apart.  Today we have stable atoms up to 210 units in our atom weight scale, beyond that magic number the atoms are unstable and keep on breaking down with the time following a more or less spontaneous but specific paths determined solely by their atom number.  So, what could be the sole or nature of the strong force?

(10^-32) seconds from the beginning

(10^-10) seconds from the beginning

A great freeze out, at the end of this time period the three forces: gravity, strong force, and electroweak forces are fully formed - condensed and frozen out.  This is the electroweak era.  The slight asymmetry between matter and antimatter is now also fully frozen. 

3 minutes later

the particle era begins with temperature at the beginning of this period at 10^15 K.  The electroweak force splits to weak and  electromagnetic forces, and the particle era charges now out in full swing.  The slight asymmetry between the matter and antimatter keeps on producing minute amounts of matter per each interaction.   The spontaneous production of protons and antiprotons continues until the temperature cools below proton Mass of 938 MeV.   As the universe has about equal amount of photons and particles the photon interactions with matter form continuously particle and antiparticle pairs, that  produces still more matter.  The temperature cools down to 10^12 K corresponding to 100 MeV at the end of this era.  This pre-universal soup contains now the seeds to the stuff we can see and touch although at this time the universe is still a "little" too hot for comfort.  As a comparison to exist an electron positron pair is stable at energy level of 1 MeV or a 10^10 K temperature or below.   At this temperature level the era of ordinary material is beginning. 

From year 1 utill the yaer 300,000 from the beginning

The universe has cooled to 10^9 K and almost everything visible is Hydrogen and Helium with small traces of other lighter atoms in the periodic table.   This era of material formation continues until the universe is about 300,000 years or 10^13 seconds old.  there is now enough material for all stars and galaxies to start forming. 

9.1 billion years later, 4,600,000,000 before we out time

NASA calculates that there are about 10^21 stars in the universe, when a star is something similar in principle like our sun, which is a large stable nuclear reactor, and can have nothing or a multitude of planets orbiting it.  We now estimate that inside the vision field of Hubble telescope we have about 125 * 10^9 galaxies.  Whatever it is, where we live in, is just more than simply huge.   And we could see only 5% of it if it would be close enough for our eyes.  Something else is out there, but we have not seen it, nor have we been able to measured it, or tasted it, nor have we any idea what it really is - except that it just waits to be discovered! 

It could as well be similarly frozen antimatter and energy in parallel worlds.   And should we try to figure it out?  Did the three ships that Columbus sailed into sunset produce any useful results for mankind?  Does the understanding of the huge power available from nuclear reactions produce any beneficial results for the mankind?  With or without backlash our own survival on this planet will depend on our mastering the use of this huge energy source.  Did the landing to Moon produce any beneficial results to the mankind?  In general, how have the life altering inventions for mankind been created?  Is it done by political and religious maneuvering or by scientific research of the still unknown?

All stars themselves live a violent life forming independent nuclear reactors ignited and held together by their gravity. They have three distinctive phases in their lives.  They start by burning hydrogen, then on the second phase after all hydrogen is used they switch to a hotter fuel, helium, and the outer sphere of this reactor expands tremendously in size but still finding a balance with the universe. In the final third stage, if the start is large enough it switches to ignite to the Carbon.  This reaction however is so powerful that no gravity field can hold it together and it all explodes to nothing as a supernova. 

With this we can always as what happened 13.7 billion years ago?  Was it a major supernova in the lineage of many supernovas or was it the beginning of it all?

4,600,000,000

Earth, the third planet from the sun in our solar system located far in the outskirts of our Milky Way Galaxy, was fully formed and open for business.  Meteorites falling today on earth have also uniform age of about 4,600,000,000 years.  However, surface of earth itself is much younger as the rocks are continuously recycled through the tectonic plate movements caused by the earth rotation and molten lava between the solid core and the thin crust on top of which we live.  What is the meaning of age of an atom anyhow, or the age of currently visible lava blocks, mountains, or anything else above or under the ground, or the age of the Universe?

4,600,000,000

Various inorganic and organic soups and gases are commonly available every day on earth following the interactions between solar and inter galactic radiation, liquid water, winds, rain, day and night cycle with more or less gentle temperature variations, lava flows with huge temperature variations, dissolving minerals (all elements of the periodic table) and with everything spiced frequent lightning.  Our laboratory is certainly well equipped for anything we want to experiment with.

4,600,000,000until today

And what is this stuff?

During the process of stellar evolution nuclear fusion reactions take place within a star. These give rise to the formation of the chemical elements. Clues to the processes involved may be deduced from the graph below, which shows the cosmic abundances of elements (y-axis) plotted against atomic number (x-axis). The abundances are measured relative to 1 million silicon atoms and the y-axis is a logarithmic scale. In this case the data are for the solar-system and abundances have been measured from the optical analysis of the solar spectrum.

 

There are three important observations to be made from this graph:

1. The graph has (overall) a smooth trend from left to right, that is from light to heavy elements. This indicates that abundances of elements in the solar system are the greatest for the light elements and the least for the heavy elements.

2. Superimposed upon the smooth trend described above is a smaller scale irregularity such that elements with even atomic numbers have higher abundances than those with odd atomic numbers.

3. Some elements have anomalous abundances. Hydrogen (H) and Helium (He) and Iron (Fe) have anomalously high concentrations and the elements Lithium (Li), Boron (B) and Beryllium (Be) have anomalously low concentrations.

It is thought that the early Universe consisted almost entirely of the element hydrogen, with a small amount of helium present too. Hydrogen, therefore, is thought to be the starting material from which all other elements have been built. This is consistent with the very high abundance of hydrogen in the solar abundance profile. The process may be thought of as a series of fusion reactions which weld together simple atomic nuclei to build increasing complex atomic nuclei. The manner in which this is done depends upon the internal temperature of the star and on its mass.

Early in star development hydrogen is utilized to manufacture the element helium. As the hydrogen in the star is used up, the star contracts and its temperature rises so that nuclear reactions can take place which permit the synthesis of the elements carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, from helium. When the helium is almost completely consumed the carbon and oxygen can be transformed into elements with masses up to that of silicon. Increasing nuclear reactions, at higher temperatures lead to the formation of elements with masses up to that of iron (Fe). Beyond this point heavier elements cannot be formed by the process of nuclear fusion because the temperatures required are higher than those found in stars.

Elements heavier than iron are formed by the addition of neutrons which are absorbed by the atomic nucleus. The very high abundance at the iron peak suggests that nuclei of the element iron are formed more readily than they are used in the process of neutron capture. 

The anomalously low concentrations of the elements Li, Be and B indicate that they are by-passed in nuclear fusion reactions and their genesis seems to be explained by the partial decay of heavier nuclei of the elements carbon and oxygen.

Differences in concentration between elements with even and odd atomic numbers can be explained by the greater stability of atomic nuclei with paired neutrons. Thus elements with even atomic numbers have the greater nuclear stability. This allows their abundances to grow.

You may wish to follow up this section with visits to the following sites - they tend to shift with the time, so some may not exist any more:

• http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101bbtest2.html

• http://photon.phys.clemson.edu/wwwpages/StarLife.html and try the quiz at the bottom of page

If you are really keen you may wish to try

• http://www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/cosmic_evolution/docs/text/text_stel_6.html