The model of a homogeneous isotropic unsteady hot expanding Universe, built on the basis of the general theory of relativity and the relativistic theory of gravitation, created by A. Einstein in 1916, is currently accepted in cosmology as the main one. This model is based on two assumptions: the properties of the universe are the same at all points (homogeneity) and directions (isotropy); the best known description of a gravitational field is the Einstein equations. This implies the so-called curvature of space and the relationship of curvature with the density of mass (energy). A cosmology based on these postulates - relativistic.

An important feature of this model is its nonstationarity. This is determined by two postulates of the theory of relativity: 1) the principle of relativity, which says that in all inertial systems all laws are preserved regardless of the speed at which these systems move uniformly and rectilinearly relative to each other; 2) the experimentally confirmed constancy of the speed of light.

From the theory of relativity it followed that curved space cannot be stationary: it must either expand or contract. The first to notice this was the St. Petersburg physicist and mathematician A. A. Fridman in 1922. he hypothesized the expansion of the universe. An empirical confirmation of this hypothesis was the discovery by the American astronomer E. Hubble in 1929 of the so-called redshift.

Astronomers study celestial bodies by the radiation received from them. This radiation is laid out with the help of special prisms, obtaining the so-called spectrum, consisting of seven primary colors. Sometimes we see a naturally occurring spectrum in the sky - a rainbow. It appears because water droplets divide the sunbeam into its components. Scientists are artificially obtaining the spectrum. Each body has its own special spectrum, i.e. a certain ratio between colors. Studying it, one can draw a conclusion about the composition of bodies, speed and direction of their movement.

The redshift is a decrease in the frequencies of electromagnetic radiation: in the visible part of the spectrum, lines are shifted towards its red end. According to the previously discovered Doppler effect, when any source of oscillations moves away from us, the perceived frequency of oscillations decreases, and the wavelength increases accordingly. When radiation occurs, "reddening" occurs, i.e. spectrum lines are shifted towards longer red waves.

The detection of the redshift is facilitated by the fact that the light passing through any medium is absorbed by the chemical elements of this medium. Since the energy levels at which the electrons that make up the chemical elements are located are different, each chemical element absorbs a special part of the light, leaving dark lines in the spectrum of the ray passing through it. From the absorbed part of the spectrum, it is possible to determine the composition of the medium through which the light has passed, as well as the speed of movement of the object emitting light. Dark lines shift as the object moves away from us towards the red part of the spectrum.

So, for all distant light sources, the redshift was fixed, and the farther the source was, the more. The redshift turned out to be proportional to the distance to the source, which confirmed the hypothesis that they were removed, i.e. on the expansion of the Metagalaxy of the visible part of the Universe. The discovery of the redshift made it possible to draw a conclusion about the "recession" of galaxies and the expansion of the Universe. The redshift reliably confirms the theoretical conclusion about the unsteady ™ of our Universe.

If the universe is expanding, then it arose at a certain point in time. How did it come about? An integral part of the model of the expanding universe is the idea of ​​the Big Bang, which occurred approximately 13.7 plus or minus 0.2 billion years ago. The author of the Big Bang model G. A. Gamov, a student of A. A. Fridman, and the term "Big Bang" belongs to the English astronomer F. Hoyle. “In the beginning there was an explosion. Not an explosion that is familiar to us on Earth and which starts from a certain center and then spreads, capturing more and more space, but an explosion that occurred simultaneously everywhere, filling all space from the very beginning, and each particle of matter rushed away from every other particles ".

The initial state of the Universe (the so-called singularity point- from the English, "single" - the only one) is characterized by the following properties: infinite mass density, space in the form of a point and explosive expansion 1

rhenium. The Big Bang model is confirmed by the discovery in 1965. relict radiation photons and neutrinos formed at the early stage of the expansion of the Universe. The prediction of the CMB was a consequence of the Big Bang model and the expanding Universe, and its detection was a confirmation of this consequence. The word "relict" here is not accidental - this is how relict animals are called species that appeared in antiquity and exist to this day.

The question arises: from what was the universe formed? The Bible states that God created "everything out of nothing." After in classical science the laws of conservation of matter and energy were formulated, some philosophers assumed that by "nothing" was meant the initial material chaos, ordered by God.

Surprisingly, modern science admits that everything could have been created out of nothing. "Nothing" in scientific terminology is called vacuum. The vacuum that physics of the XIX century. considered emptiness, according to modern scientific concepts, it is a kind of form of matter, capable, under certain conditions, to "give birth" to its other forms. Quantum mechanics admits that a vacuum can come into an "excited state", as a result of which a field can form in it, and from it (which is confirmed by modern physical experiments) matter.

The birth of the Universe from "nothing" means, from the modern scientific point of view, its spontaneous emergence from a vacuum, when in the absence of particles there is a spontaneous emergence of an energy potential, i.e. field as one of the types of physical matter. The field strength does not have a definite value (according to Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle"): the field constantly fluctuates, although the average (observed) value of the strength is zero.

Due to fluctuations, the vacuum acquires special properties. In a vacuum, “particles are continuously created out of nothing, like fluctuations of energy, and then destroyed again, but disappear so quickly that they can never be directly observed. Such particles are called virtual "1.

Fluctuation is the appearance of virtual particles that are continuously born and immediately destroyed, but also participate in interactions like real particles. “We can say that each of the colliding particles is surrounded by a cloud of virtual particles. When particles hit each other with the edges of their clouds, virtual particles turn into real ones. "

So, the Universe could be formed from "nothing", i.e. from the "excited vacuum". Such a hypothesis, of course, is not a confirmation of the artificial creation of the world. All this could happen in accordance with the laws of physics in a natural way, without any outside interference from any ideal entities. And in this case, scientific hypotheses do not confirm or refute religious dogmas that lie on the other side of empirically confirmed and refuted natural science.

The amazing things in modern physics do not end there. Answering a journalist's request to explain the essence of the theory of relativity in one phrase, A. Einstein said: “It was believed earlier that if all matter disappeared from the Universe, then space and time would be preserved; the theory of relativity asserts that space and time would disappear along with matter. " Transferring this conclusion to the model of the expanding Universe, we can conclude that before the formation of the Universe (if our Universe is the only one) there was neither space nor time.

Note that the theory of relativity corresponds to two varieties of the model of the expanding Universe. In the first of them, the curvature of space-time is negative or equal to zero in the limit; in this version, all distances increase indefinitely with time. In the second version of the model, the curvature is positive, space is finite, and in this case expansion is replaced with contraction over time. In both versions, the theory of relativity is consistent with the current empirically confirmed expansion of the universe.

The human mind inevitably asks questions: what was then when there was nothing, and what is beyond expansion. The first question is obviously contradictory in itself, the second goes beyond the scope of concrete science.

An astronomer may say that as a scientist he is not entitled to answer such questions. But since they nevertheless arise, possible justifications for the answers are formulated, which are not so much scientific as natural philosophical.

Thus, a distinction is made between the terms "infinite" and "limitless". An example of infinity, which is not unlimited, is the surface of the Earth: we can walk on it for an infinitely long time, but nevertheless it is limited by the atmosphere from above and crust from below. The universe can also be infinite, but limited. On the other hand, there is a well-known point of view according to which there can be nothing infinite in the material world, because it develops in the form of finite systems with loops feedback by which these systems are created in the process of transforming the environment. Let's leave these considerations of natural philosophy, because in natural science, in the final analysis, the criterion of truth is not abstract thoughts, but empirical testing of hypotheses.

What happened at the initial stages of the evolution of the Universe, called the Big Bang? The hypothesis of the gradual evolution of physical matter and the formation of existing physical forces from the original unified superpower is dominant in cosmology. There are the following stages of the Big Bang: inflationary, superstring, grand unification stage, electroweak, quark, stage of nucleosynthesis.

When the age of the Universe was less than 10 ~ 43 s, its intensive expansion (inflation) took place, called inflation (the well-known word is used here in a special specific sense). "Inflation offers a natural mechanism for creating large spatial dimensions in the Universe."

What expanded in the absence of matter in space? Space itself, namely three spatial dimensions (in general, spatial dimensions in the early stages of the evolution of the Universe and currently number up to 10). This inflationary stage.“When the inflation ended, there was a tremendous transfer of energy. The energy that drove the inflationary expansion was transformed into elementary particles and radiation, which resulted in a dramatic increase in the temperature of the Universe ”1.

When the age of the Universe reached 10 -43 s, the first material objects appeared, called superstrings, because, by analogy with ordinary strings, they have a length and the ability to vibrate. The strings have no thickness, and the length is about 10 33 cm. This superstring stage. It is assumed that the vibrations of the strings are capable of generating all possible particles and physical fields... Moreover, "ordinary" particles and physical fields live only in the real world with the number of dimensions 3 + 1 (three space plus time). “An attractive feature of such a picture is that it makes it possible to view all particles as the same fundamental object - a superstring ... properties ... Another attractive feature of superstring theory is that particle interactions are naturally explained by breaking the string into pieces or joining separate pieces together. "

At each subsequent stage, as the Universe expands, the temperature gradually decreases, determining the ongoing physical processes. The next stage is named stage of the great unification, since a single superpower broke at the beginning of it into the force of gravity and the force of the great unification. At this stage, only three spatial dimensions, known to us as length, width and height, have continued to expand. The drop in temperature caused the strings to collapse, and they began to resemble point objects that are known today as elementary particles and antiparticles. During this period, elementary particles exchanged particles responsible for the transfer of the power of the great unification and were indistinguishable from each other.

At the age of the Universe 10 35 s, the power of the grand unification split into strong and electroweak forces. Has begun electroweak stage. Elementary particles lost the ability to interact with each other through the force of the great unification and were divided into quarks and leptons, but due to the electroweak force they interacted with radiation and were indistinguishable from it.

At the age of the Universe K) -10 s, the electroweak forces split into weak and electromagnetic ones. Has begun quark stage... At the beginning of it, in the absence of an electroweak force, a strong force became more influential, which united quarks into protons and neutrons.

At the age of the Universe 10 4 s at a temperature of a billion degrees, the process of the formation of nuclei of hydrogen and helium atoms (nucleosynthesis) began. Accordingly, this stage got the name nucleosynthesis. The entire process was completed in about three minutes.

Over the next 300,000 years, the universe continued to expand, and the temperature dropped to 3,000 degrees. Atoms began to form from the nuclei of atoms and electrons and began era of substance. The appearance of atoms can be seen as the end of the Big Bang.

At the stages of the emergence of matter, the Universe consisted of a dense mixture of elementary particles in a plasma state (something between a solid and a liquid state). The plasma expanded more and more under the action of the blast wave. Accordingly, its temperature dropped, and as a result, the composition of the substance changed: “... when the temperature was above 1 billion degrees, the electromagnetic radiation had enough energy to destroy any nuclei that might have arisen. Likewise, if an atom somehow managed to form when the temperature was more than three thousand degrees, the radiation would soon collide with it and knock out the electrons, making them free. Below this temperature, the radiation energy was no longer sufficient to free electrons, and therefore the atoms survived ”1.

0.01 s after the start of the Big Bang, a mixture of light nuclei (/ 3 hydrogen and * / 3 helium) appeared in the Universe. In terms of its chemical composition, the Universe is currently more than 90% composed of hydrogen and helium.

"Since there were no free charged particles capable of interacting with the main part of the radiation, it remained essentially undistorted as the universe expanded further." Since the atoms are neutral and the photons that make up the radiation are negatively charged, the radiation was separated from matter when the atoms were formed. The detection of this radiation, called relict, became the decisive confirmation of the Big Bang model.

In the same place. P. 67.

This article was written by Vladimir Gorunovich for my sites and the site "Wikiznaniye", and posted on this site in order to protect information from vandals.

Expansion of the universe- an imaginary process of almost homogeneous and almost isotropic expansion of outer space after the hypothetical appearance of the Universe, as a result of the so-called "Big Bang". It is assumed that the expansion of the universe is observed in the form of fulfillment of the Hubble law. Theoretically, the phenomenon was predicted by A. Friedman at an early stage of the development of the general theory of relativity from general philosophical considerations about the homogeneity and isotropy of the universe.

At the moment, physics does not have direct evidence of the expansion of the Universe, and also casts doubt on the conformity to the nature of the "Big Bang" model, historically (by mistake) called the theory. Nobody measured the exact distance to distant galaxies and showed that it is constantly increasing.

At the end of the twentieth century, assertions appeared that the Universe is not just expanding, but expanding at an accelerated rate. This conclusion was made on the basis of observations of the spectra of type Ia supernovae. In fact, a deviation from the Hubble law was found, which may indicate its inaccuracy or incorrectness (within the entire universe).

2 Expansion of the Universe and the "Big Bang"
3 "Acceleration" of the expansion of the Universe
4 Expansion of the Universe and "Background radiation"
5 Expansion of the Universe - Summary

1 Universe expansion and redshift

• Main article: Redshift

The conclusion about the presence of the expansion of the Universe was made based on the interpretation of the redshift in favor of the Doppler effect. But then physics still did not know anything about neutrinos or photon-neutrino interactions. The hypothesis of the expansion of the universe then seemed convincing.

But time went on. Physics studied the microcosm more and more deeply. A huge variety of elementary particles have been discovered, and their properties have been studied. Then, as a generalization of the accumulated experimental data, the field theory of elementary particles appeared, which established the electromagnetic nature of matter, including such an elusive particle as a neutrino. Well, since (according to classical electrodynamics) electromagnetic fields interact with each other, it means that the photon will also interact with the neutrino. Thus, the ignored photon-neutrino interactions standard model lead to the formation of a redshift in the spectra of stars in distant galaxies - which is what we observe.

Thus, physics cannot assert that the redshift is a consequence of the expansion of the Universe. - The redshift, allowing for ambiguity of interpretation, cannot be considered by physics as evidence of the expansion of the Universe.

2 Expansion of the Universe and the "Big Bang"

• Main article: Big Bang

Physics denies the possibility of a Big Bang in the history of the Universe, as events that ignore the laws of nature. Hence the fictional The big bang cannot be the cause of the expansion of the universe.

3 "Acceleration" of the expansion of the Universe

• Main article: Dark energy

Physics has not established the presence of dark energy in the Universe. Moreover, physics denies dark energy as a separate form of energy (as well as dark matter as a separate form of matter). Hence, physics has not established the presence of physical forces expanding the Universe.

Let's take a short excerpt from Wikipedia: "For example, when the volume of the Universe doubles, the density of baryonic matter is halved, and the density of dark energy remains almost unchanged (or exactly unchanged - in the variant with a cosmological constant)." It follows from what has been said that the hypothetical "dark" energy will contradict the law of conservation of energy, since with the expansion of the Universe its total energy will have to increase - taken from nothing. - You can invent anything you want by observing galaxies through a telescope from a great distance. You can even get for it nobel prize- but that won't change anything in the universe.

4 Expansion of the Universe and "Background radiation"

• Main article: Relict radiation

The presence in nature of the background cosmic microwave radiation historically (by mistake) called "relic radiation" does not in any way follow the expansion of the Universe. The emergence of electromagnetic radiation due to the expansion of the Universe will proceed in violation of the law of conservation of energy and the laws of electromagnetism. The statement that this radiation arose more than 13 billion years ago has not been proven by anything - this is just one of the assumptions about the source of the background cosmic microwave radiation.

Currently, the field theory of elementary particles has established one of the natural sources of background cosmic microwave radiation corresponding to the laws of nature: these are interactions of elementary particles, for example, neutrinos. Relativistic electron neutrinos emitted by stars mostly leave galaxies and collide with the molecular compounds of other electron neutrinos. As a result of such a collision in intergalactic space, the molecular compounds of electron neutrinos break apart. After a certain number of collisions with other similar compounds and the loss of kinetic energy, a pair of electron neutrinos again combine into a bound state with the emission of quanta of electromagnetic radiation. Thus, microwave electromagnetic radiation should be observed emanating from all regions of space, even from those where there are no stars. But the law of conservation of energy, as well as the laws of electromagnetism, are fulfilled in this case. The most intense radiation will come from galaxies, where the sources of electron neutrinos - stars - are concentrated. Thus, the most intense for a terrestrial observer should be the radiation emanating from the space surrounding the Milky Way.

This is what a genuine map of the cosmic microwave background radiation looks like, without retouching for the tale of the "Big Bang".

Thus, the background cosmic microwave radiation historically (by mistake) called "cosmic microwave background radiation" is not evidence of the expansion of the universe.

5 Expansion of the Universe - Summary

Physics has not established evidence of the expansion of the universe... There are several indirect data, interpreted by the supporters of the Big Bang hypothesis, as confirming the existence of the expansion of the Universe, but physics has shown the inconsistency of these arguments. - It is necessary to look for scientific answers to the mysteries of nature, and not to write fairy tales.

Vladimir Gorunovich

The study not only suggests that chaos is absolute, but also offers mathematical tools to detect it. When it comes to the most appropriate model for the evolution of the universe, these tools show that the early universe was plunged into chaos.

Some things are absolute, like the speed of light. Others are relative: remember the Doppler effect. An old problem in physics is to determine whether chaos is a phenomenon in which tiny events lead to very large changes in the evolution of systems like the universe - absolute or relative in systems governed by general relativity, where time itself is relative.

The practical aspect of this puzzle is to determine if the universe has ever been chaotic. If chaos is relative, as some studies have argued, there simply cannot be an answer to this question, since different observers moving in relation to each other can draw opposite conclusions.

"There is another hypothesis, which says that chaos may be a property of the observer, and not the observed system," says Adelson Motter. "Our research shows that different material observers will necessarily agree on the chaotic nature of the observed system."

The work of American scientists has direct implications for cosmology and, in particular, shows that unpredictable changes between red and blue shifts in the direction of motion in the early Universe are, in fact, chaotic.

Until now, an important question of cosmology remains unanswered: why the distant parts the visible universe(including those too far away to ever interact with each other) are so similar. It can be assumed that the huge Universe was created in a monotonous way, but such an answer physicists cannot accept.

Fifty years ago, physicists believed that the correct answer was hidden in the events that occurred in the fraction of a second after the Big Bang. While initial research did not prove that the initial state of the universe will eventually converge to its current form, scientists have found that the universe may have been born in total chaos.

The modern Universe is expanding and doing so in all directions, which leads to the redshift of distant light sources in all three dimensions. In contrast, the early universe expanded in only two dimensions and contracted in the third. This resulted in redshift in two directions and blue in one direction. However, the "contracting" direction alternated randomly between the x, y, and z axes.

"According to classical general relativity, the young universe underwent infinitely many oscillations between contracting and expanding directions," says Motter. "This could mean that the early evolution of the universe was highly dependent on initial conditions Big Bang and does not necessarily correspond to its current state. "

This problem took on a new dimension 22 years ago when two other researchers, Gerson Francisco and George Matsas, found that different descriptions of the same event lead to different conclusions about the chaos of the early Universe. Since different descriptions may represent different perspectives of observers, this challenges the hypothesis that different observers can reach agreement. Within the framework of general relativity, such an agreement is known as the "relativistic invariant".

“Technically, we created the conditions under which relativistic invariants are indicators of chaos,” explains Moller. Our mathematical descriptions also explain the conflicting results that exist. They were generated by the peculiarities of the choice of the time coordinate, which is not a physically admissible measurable quantity. "

Everything that has been said here so far is only hypotheses based on some real facts. However, the same facts can be interpreted in a different way.

Thus, attempts have been made repeatedly to interpret the redshift not as a consequence of the Doppler effect and the expansion of the Universe, but as a consequence of a decrease in the energy and natural frequency of photons when they move for many millions of years in intergalactic space, as a result of interaction with gravitational fields, a neutrino background that is not observable until the matter. Such attempts were rejected on the grounds that they were based on the assumption of some still unknown law of nature and the phenomenon of the interaction of radiation with other types of matter.

But the fact is that the acceptance of the redshift as a consequence of the Doppler effect leads to consequences that, if accepted, are based on a set of even more obscure and unknown laws of nature, and their number is much greater than in the indicated hypothesis. Today there are observational data of quasars. The spectral lines of quasars have an anomalous high redshift of 2.5 - 2.8. This means that if such a redshift were due to the Doppler effect, then the rate of removal of quasars would be 2.5 - 2.8 times higher than the speed of light, which is impossible. Hence it follows that most of The redshift of quasars is due to an extremely powerful gravitational field, that is, it is gravitational. If there are similar objects in other galaxies, then their gravitational redshift will significantly affect the total redshift, as a result of which the picture of the dynamics of galaxies and the distances to them will be different in comparison with the purely kinematic interpretation of the redshift. Indeed, extremely distant galaxies have now been discovered, the redshift of which corresponds, according to the Doppler effect, to speed. mutual distance of 150 thousand km / s, and, apparently, this speed further increases even more, approaching the speed of light, until the galaxies disappear beyond the horizon of fundamental observability. Such a monstrous kinetic energy, comparable to the rest mass energy of galaxies, cannot be deduced from any physical laws.

The statement about the possibility of the transition of all matter into a point singularity is also unfounded. Indeed, relativistic astrophysics admits the existence of not one, but very many relative singularities at the centers of black holes, which, however, have a finite length and mass, interact with the environment and even gradually "evaporate" as a result of particles seeping into outer space through a potential barrier.

Contradictions also arise in the explanation of the phenomenon of expansion itself. If the expansion is a real physical process, then it occurs due to the "invasion" of the expanding Universe either into a vacuum such as pseudo-Euclidean space, or into the space of other space systems The universe. The existence of an absolute vacuum must not be allowed, because space is an attribute of matter and does not exist outside of it. It remains to recognize the expansion into the inner space of other material systems, which themselves can both contract and expand, developing according to their own laws. But then the modern cosmological theory will cover only the Metagalaxy.

It is possible, however, to take a different point of view and admit that the expansion of the Universe is really taking place, but no external enveloping space and other cosmic systems exist; it's just that space itself is, as it were, created in the process of the expansion of the Universe, in the sense that over time the distance between any points increases and the geometry of space changes.

But this point of view contains internal contradictions. If there were expansion of space by itself, then there would be an increase in the size of all material systems: elementary particles, atoms, molecules, planets, stars, galaxies, and in the same proportion as an increase in the distances between galaxies. Meanwhile, nothing like this happens in the world, there is an expansion only on the scale of the Metagalaxy.

In the literature on cosmology, the opinion is expressed that various cosmological models of the Universe, put forward on the basis of solving the equations of the general theory of relativity, can characterize not just one of our Universe, but different states of the Universe at different periods of its existence in the past and in the future, similarly potentially possible worlds in Leibniz's concept. Anything that is not prohibited by the laws of nature can be realized somewhere and someday.

Seminar lesson plan (2 hours)

1. The subject of cosmology.

2. History of scientific cosmology.

3. Cosmological paradoxes and the crisis of the classical cosmological model.

4. Model of the expanding Universe.

Topics of reports and abstracts

1. Non-Euclidean geometries, their role in modern science.

2. Reflection of cosmological problems in modern science fiction literature.

LITERATURE

1. Weinberg S. The first three minutes. M., 1981.

2. G.V. Givisheshch Does natural science have an alternative to God // Problems of Philosophy. 1995. No. 2.

3. Demin V.N., Seleznev V.P. Comprehending the Universe ... M., 1989.

4. Siegel F.Yu. The inexhaustibility of infinity. M., 1984.

5. Novikov ID. Black holes and the Universe. M., 1985.

6. Novikov ID. Evolution of the Universe. M., 1990.

7. Philosophical problems natural science. M., 1985.

THEME 15 EVOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSE

THE BIRTH OF THE UNIVERSE

Question 6 of the origin of the Universe for many generations of scientists was the subject of their scientific research... In the history of science, there have been many hypotheses that answer this question. Modern natural science explains the origin of the universe using the Big Bang theory.

Approximately 15 billion years separates our epoch from the beginning of the expansion of the Universe, when the entire Universe we observed was compressed into a lump, billions of times smaller than a pinhead. If you believe the mathematical calculations, then at the beginning of the expansion, the radius of the Universe was completely equal to zero, and its density is equal to infinity. This initial state is called singularity - point volume with infinite density. The well-known laws of physics do not work in the singularity. Moreover, there is no certainty that science will ever know and explain such conditions. So if the singularity is the initial simplest state of our expanding Universe, then science has no information about it.

In a state of singularity, the curvature of space and time becomes infinite, these concepts themselves lose their meaning. There is not just a closure of the space-time continuum, as follows from the general theory of relativity, but its complete destruction. True, the concepts and conclusions of the general theory of relativity are applicable only up to certain limits - on a scale of the order of 10 -33 cm. Next comes the area in which completely different laws operate. But if we assume that the initial stage of the expansion of the Universe is a region dominated by quantum processes, then they must obey the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, according to which matter cannot be pulled into one point. Then it turns out that there was no singularity in the past and the substance in the initial state had a certain density and size. According to some estimates, if all the matter of the observed Universe, which is estimated to be approximately

in 10 61 g, compress to a density of 10 94 g / cm 3, it would take up the volume

about 10 -33 cm 3, which is about 1000 times the volume of the nucleus of a uranium atom. It could not have been seen through an electron microscope.

The reasons for the occurrence of such an initial state (or singularity - this hypothesis is still supported by many scientists today), as well as the nature of the stay of matter in this state, are considered unclear and beyond the competence of any modern physical theory. It is also unknown what happened before the explosion. For a long time, nothing could be said about the causes of the Big Bang, and about the transition to the expansion of the Universe, but today there are some hypotheses trying to explain these processes.

So it is obvious that the initial state before the "beginning" is not a point in the mathematical sense, it has properties that go beyond the scientific concepts of today. There is no doubt that the initial state was unstable, giving rise to an explosion, an abrupt transition to an expanding Universe. This, obviously, was the simplest state of all that was realized later up to the present day. Everything that is familiar to us was violated in it: the forms of matter, the laws governing their behavior, the space-time continuum. Such a state can be called chaos, from which order was formed step by step in the subsequent development of the system.

Chaos turned out to be unstable, this served as the initial impetus for the subsequent development of the Universe.

Even Democritus argued that the world consists of atoms and emptiness - an absolutely homogeneous space separating atoms and bodies into which they are combined. Modern science at a new level interprets atomism, and brings a completely different meaning to the concept of a medium separating particles. This environment is by no means an absolute emptiness, it is quite material and has very peculiar properties that are still poorly understood. According to tradition, this environment, inseparable from matter, continues to be called emptiness, vacuum.

Vacuum - this is a space in which there are no real particles and the condition of the minimum energy density in a given volume is satisfied. It would seem that since there are no real particles, then space is empty, it cannot contain energy, even the minimum. But this idea came to us from classical physics. Quantum theory, based on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, refutes it. We remember that in relation to field theory, the uncertainty principle states that it is impossible to simultaneously accurately determine the field strength and the number of particles. Since the number of particles is zero, then the field strength cannot be zero, otherwise both parameters will be known, and the uncertainty principle will be violated. The field strength in a vacuum can exist only in the form of fluctuation oscillations around zero. The energy corresponding to these vibrations will be the minimum possible.

In accordance with the recognized dualism of wave and corpuscular properties, field oscillations must generate particles. And here we are faced with one more paradox of the microworld. Quantum effects can suspend the law of conservation of energy for a very short time. During this period of time, energy can be borrowed for various purposes, including the creation of particles. Of course, all the particles that arise in this case will be short-lived, since the energy expended on them must be returned after an insignificant fraction of a second. However, particles can actually arise out of nothing, gaining a fleeting existence before disappearing again. And this fleeting activity cannot be prevented. These ghost particles cannot be observed, although they can leave a trace of their short-term existence. They are a kind of virtual particles, similar to carriers of interaction, but not designed to receive or transmit signals.

Thus, the “empty” vacuum turns out to be filled with virtual particles. He is not lifeless and faceless, but full of energy. And what we call particles are just rare disturbances, like "bubbles" on the surface of a whole sea of ​​activity.

Modern theories suggest that the energy of the vacuum manifests itself by no means unambiguously. A vacuum can be excited and be in one of many states with very different energies, just as an atom can be excited, moving to higher energy levels, and the difference between the lowest and highest energies is unimaginably large.

Obviously, the vacuum plays the role of the basic form of matter. At the earliest phase of the evolution of the Universe, it is he who is assigned the leading role. Extreme conditions of "beginning", when even space-time was deformed, suggest that the vacuum was in a special state, which is called a "false" vacuum. It is characterized by the energy of an extremely high density, which corresponds to an extremely high density of matter. In this state of matter, the strongest stresses can arise in it, negative pressure, which is equivalent to a gravitational repulsion of such magnitude, which caused the unrestrained and rapid expansion of the Universe - the Big Bang. This was the first impulse, the "beginning."

With the beginning of the rapid expansion of the Universe, time and space arise. According to various estimates, the "inflation" period takes an unimaginably short period of time - up to 10 -33 s after the "start". It is called the inflationary period. During this time, the Universe manages to swell up to a giant "bubble", the radius of which is several orders of magnitude greater than the radius of the modern Universe, but there are practically no particles of matter. This is not yet the extension that we talked about, but a prerequisite for it. By the end of the inflationary phase, the universe was empty and cold. But when inflation dried up, the universe suddenly became extremely hot. This burst of heat is due to the enormous reserves of energy trapped in a "false" vacuum. When this vacuum state disintegrated, its energy was released in the form of radiation, which instantly heated the Universe to 10 27 K. From that moment on, the Universe developed according to the standard theory of the hot Big Bang.

The task of modern astronomy is not only to explain the data of astronomical observations, but also study of the evolution of the universe(from lat. evolution -- deployment, development). These questions are considered by cosmology - the most intensively developing field of astronomy.

The study of the evolution of the Universe is based on the following:

· Universal physical laws are considered valid throughout the Universe.

· The conclusions from the results of astronomical observations are recognized as being applicable to the entire Universe.

· Only those conclusions that do not contradict the possibility of the existence of the observer himself, that is, a person (anthropic principle) are recognized as true.

When studying the Universe, it is impossible to conduct an empirical verification of the results of research, therefore, the conclusions of cosmology are called not laws, but models of the origin and development of the Universe.

Model(from lat. modulus- sample, norm) is a diagram of a certain fragment of natural or social reality (original), a possible version of its explanation. In the process of the development of science, the old model is replaced by the new model.

At the heart of modern cosmology is an evolutionary approach to the emergence and development of the Universe, in accordance with which the model of the expanding Universe.

The key prerequisite for creating a model of an evolving expanding Universe was A. Einstein's general theory of relativity. The object of the theory of relativity is physical events. Physical events characterize concepts space, time, matter, movement, which are considered in the theory of relativity in unity... Proceeding from the unity of matter, space and time, it follows that with the disappearance of matter, both space and time would disappear. Thus, before the formation of the universe, there was neither space nor time. Einstein derived fundamental equations connecting the distribution of matter with the geometric properties of space, with the passage of time, and on their basis in 1917 he developed a statistical model of the Universe.

According to this model, the universe has the following properties:

· uniformity, that is, it has the same properties at all points;

· isotropy, that is, it has the same properties in all directions.

From the theory of relativity it follows that curved space cannot be stationary: it must either expand or contract. Thus, the Universe has one more property - nonstationarity... For the first time, the conclusion about the nonstationarity of the Universe was made by A.A. Friedman, Russian physicist and mathematician, in 1922

In 1929 the American astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered the so-called "redshift".

Redshift- this is a decrease in the frequencies of electromagnetic radiation: in the visible part of the spectrum, the lines are shifted to its red end.

The essence of this phenomenon is as follows: as any source of oscillations moves away from us, the oscillation frequency perceived by us decreases, and the wavelength, accordingly, increases, therefore, during radiation, "reddening" occurs, that is, the lines of the spectrum are shifted towards longer red waves. E. Hubble investigated the spectra of distant galaxies and found that their spectral lines are shifted towards the red lines, which means the "scattering" of galaxies. Subsequent studies have shown that galaxies are moving away at high speed not only from the observer, but also from each other. In this case, the speed of "recession" of galaxies, calculated in tens of thousands of kilometers per second, is directly proportional to the distance between them. This is how the fact of the expansion of the Universe was established.

Based on the results of the research, E. Hubble formulated the law, important for cosmology ( Hubble's law):

This means that the Universe is not stationary: it is in a state of constant expansion.

From the position that the universe is currently in a state of expansion, scientists, operating mathematical models, came to the conclusion that once, in the distant past, it must have been in a compressed state. Calculations showed that 13-15 billion years ago the matter of our Universe was concentrated in an unusually small volume, about 10 -33 cm 3, and had a huge density - 10 93 g / cm 3 at a temperature of 10 27 K. Therefore, the initial state The universe - the so-called "singular point" - is characterized by almost infinite density and curvature of space, superhigh temperature. It is believed that the currently observed Universe arose thanks to a giant explosion of this original cosmic matter - Big Bang of the Universe... The Big Bang concept is part of models of the expanding Universe. The concept of the Big Bang, which logically explains many aspects of the evolution of the Universe, does not answer the question of how it arose. This task is solved theory of inflation.

Inflation theory, or bloating universe theory, arose not as a counterbalance, but in addition to the development of the Big Bang concept. As follows from this theory, the universe arose from nothing... "Nothing" in scientific terminology is called vacuum... In accordance with modern scientific concepts, there are no physical particles, fields and waves in a vacuum. However, it contains virtual particles that are born due to the energy of the vacuum and immediately disappear. When the vacuum for some reason at some point was excited and went out of equilibrium, the virtual particles began to capture energy without recoil and turn into real particles. This period of the origin of the Universe is called the inflation (or inflation) phase. In the inflation phase, the space of our Universe increases from a billionth of the size of a proton to several centimeters. This expansion is 10-50 times larger than the Big Bang concept. By the end of the inflation phase of the Universe, a huge set of real particles had formed together with the energy associated with them.

When the excited vacuum was destroyed, a huge radiation energy was released, and a certain superpower squeezed the particles into superdense matter. Due to the unusually high temperature and enormous pressure, the universe continued to swell, but now with acceleration. As a result, the superdense and superhot matter exploded. At the moment of the Big Bang, thermal energy is converted into mechanical and gravitational energy of the masses. This means that the universe is born in accordance with the law of conservation of energy.

Thus, the main idea of ​​the theory of inflation is that the Universe at the early stages of its origin had an unstable vacuum-like state with a high energy density. This energy, like the original matter, arose from a quantum vacuum, that is, from nothing. Explaining the origin of the Universe from an excited vacuum, the theory of inflation tries to solve one of the main problems of the universe - the problem of the emergence of everything (the Universe) from nothing (from a vacuum).

In the middle of the twentieth century. formulated hot universe concept... According to this concept, in the early stages of expansion, shortly after the Big Bang, the universe was very hot: radiation dominated over matter. During expansion, the temperature dropped, and from a certain moment the space became practically transparent for radiation. The radiation preserved from the initial moments of evolution ( relic radiation), uniformly fills the entire Universe so far. Due to the expansion of the Universe, the temperature of this radiation continues to fall. At present, it is 2.7 K. The discovery of relic radiation in 1965. was an observational substantiation of the concept of a hot universe. The fundamental property of the Universe was revealed - it hot... Thus, in accordance with the model developed on the basis of the theory of relativity, the expanding Universe is homogeneous, isotropic, unsteady and hot.

The established facts are convincing arguments confirming the validity of the cosmological model of the expanding Universe. These facts include the following:

· Expansion of the Universe in accordance with the Hubble law;

· Uniformity of luminous matter at distances of the order of 100 megaparsec;

The existence of a background radiation background with a thermal spectrum corresponding to a temperature of 2.7 K.

The age of the Universe, according to the modern cosmological concept of its origin and development, is calculated from the beginning of expansion and is estimated at 13-15 billion years. Modern astronomy is developing rapidly: new space objects have been discovered, installed earlier unknown facts... Quasars, neutron stars, black holes are among the relatively recently discovered space objects.

Quasars- powerful sources of cosmic radio emission, which are believed to be the brightest and most distant celestial objects currently known.

Neutron stars - putative stars, consisting of neutrons, formed, probably as a result of supernova explosions.

Black holes(or "frozen stars", "gravitational graves") - the objects into which the stars are supposed to turn at the final stage of their existence. The space of the black hole is, as it were, torn out of the space of the Metagalaxy: matter and radiation fall into it and cannot come back.