Big Bang in a tent

TRANSCRIPT

Moiya McTier 0:28

Welcome to Pale Blue Pod, the weekly astronomy podcast that helps you feel closer to space. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Moiya McTier.

Corinne Caputo 0:36

And I'm your other host Corinne Caputo.

Moiya McTier 0:38

And I am thrilled to tell you all that we are recording today from a tent from a platform tent at my old girl scout summer camp. The flaps are closed. And we can hear the beating of raindrops because there is a storm raging outside. But there are surprisingly excellent acoustics in here. Probably because of the cozy vibes brought by one of the candles that we snuck into camp because they are not allowed here. No,

Corinne Caputo 1:04

that's contraband, but I know someone who can get us a lot of stuff

Moiya McTier 1:08

if we need, you know, a guy who knows Yeah,

Corinne Caputo 1:12

who knows a Girl Scout,

Moiya McTier 1:13

Girl Scout, muddling some candles, just to get the best vibes. Yeah. Huh. Okay, so we are set in our cozy scene. And today, we're going to be talking about a teeny tiny topic. Nothing. Nothing big smallest at all

Corinne Caputo 1:30

fix. It's just three minutes, correct? Yeah, yeah. Three minutes a pop song? Yes,

Moiya McTier 1:36

we are talking today about the first pop song length, amount of time in the universe. We're talking about the first three minutes of the universe.

Corinne Caputo 1:46

That is crazy that so much could have happened. And so little time is what I'm imagining you're about to tell me?

Moiya McTier 1:52

Yes. I'm glad you have those instincts. Because who so much stuff happened in the first three minutes of the universe and the fact that scientists have been able to chop up the first three minutes of the universe into these teeny, tiny, short lived segments where interesting stuff happened, it blows my mind.

Corinne Caputo 2:10

Yeah, that feels so crazy that we can get that specific. And yet there are so many things, we still don't have answers to that feel more obvious.

Moiya McTier 2:18

I know, right? There's so much stuff that we like, almost feel like we should know the answers to Yeah, we don't 100% So the first three minutes of the universe, we're talking about the origins of the universe, the creation of this big collection of galaxies and stars and other stuff that we find in space. We collectively call that explanation, The Big Bang Theory, which is also the name of a TV show that I don't really love, Corinne. How do you feel about the TV show?

Corinne Caputo 2:46

Okay,I don't love it. But I have to say that I failed my first road test when I was 16. And I was crying harder than I've ever cried. And I went home, and somehow I like illegally streamed the Big Bang Theory. And I did that until dinnertime. And that's my memory of the Big Bang Theory. It was in that one specific moment it did console me, and I don't think I ever watched it again.

Moiya McTier 3:11

Well, at least it served some purpose. Yeah, if

Corinne Caputo 3:15

it helped one girl in the whole universe, that's enough. Yeah.

Moiya McTier 3:18

And who cares about the way that it has totally warped people's perception of what a scientist is? Or does? That's neither here nor there. Yeah,

Corinne Caputo 3:26

that that has nothing to do with it all. It helped me pass my road test. And that's enough. That's

Moiya McTier 3:31

what matters. So the big bang theory explains how the universe started. And it has been added to over time, what we know about the Big Bang now is not what we knew 50 years ago, and is not what we knew 100 years ago. So this is another example of an understanding of the universe that has grown over the last century. That's so cool. Yeah, just like the galaxies episode. Yeah, it's only in the last 100 years that we understood that we were living in just one of many galaxies. The short version of the Big Bang theory says that the universe started as a point mass, so a single infinitesimally small point of space, where all of the matter was collected in the universe. And then that exploded with energy and has been expanding ever since. Whoa.

Corinne Caputo 4:25

Like one teeny tiny thing has created everything. Yeah.

Moiya McTier 4:29

According to scientists current understanding. We all started in a teeny, tiny little point called a primordial atom or a primeval atom,

Corinne Caputo 4:38

the first atom, the Adam and Eve.

Moiya McTier 4:43

And the event the event. Oh, that's good. Yeah, that's nice. Yeah. So I do want to have a little disclaimer here a little moment, a brief moment of preparing for what's coming up. I'm because I know that cosmology is a pretty heavy topic, do you Corinne have any feelings when you start thinking about the origin of the universe,

Corinne Caputo 5:07

oh my gosh, immediately kind of confused and overwhelmed. It's hard to think of things that big, as I'm sure you know. And that's immediately where my brains going. When you say cosmology, though, my brain does go to cosmetology. And I'm like, that I can handle I do think I can

Moiya McTier 5:24

actually, I don't think I could handle cosmetology I have had enough trouble caring for my hair and skin in my own lifetime.

Corinne Caputo 5:31

Oh, my God, get on tick tock, if you get on the right corner of tick tock, they're gonna teach you everything. It's a boot camp. Who that but I have yet to be on cosmology.

Moiya McTier 5:41

I have not found cosmology tick tock, either. But I basically live on science, Twitter. And there's a big part of that, that is cosmology focused. So that's, that's where I find my cosmology information on the interwebs. But if you listener get a little overwhelmed by the numbers that we talked about in this episode, which actually are going to be very small numbers, not necessarily very large numbers, because we're talking about the very beginning of the universe? Well, I would encourage you to, instead of focusing on the numbers, focus on the concepts that we're saying. So if I tell you the temperature of the universe at a given point in time, and then give you another smaller number later, understand that that just means the universe was cooling down over time, you don't have to remember the specific numbers if it's going to make you anxious or upset.

Corinne Caputo 6:35

Yeah, this is like a heads up for anyone who was traumatized by the testing system in school. Like, you don't need to be as specific as what year did this start? For

Moiya McTier 6:45

sure, yeah, I just want you to get like basic concepts, basic trends that the universe carries. And I also want to warn you, if you start feeling any sort of existential dread or anxiety, remember that we are all safely resting on the same part of this fabric of space time here on our little pale blue dot, and that these events we're talking about, they are so very far away on this cloth of space time that we're all on, we can barely even feel the ripples of those events. They are they're far from us, and they cannot touch us.

Corinne Caputo 7:18

I like thinking of it like that I like thinking of any anxious topic is that is this cannot touch me. Yeah,

Moiya McTier 7:24

so just remember that we're just learning some cool, friendly facts about space. So I want to kind of start with maybe the history of what came to be known as The Big Bang Theory, which I think in most of its entirety, was published in scientific literature in 1931. But we have to go back a little bit further than that, to understand the context to understand where it came from. So we are going back to 1915, when Albert Einstein published his theory of general relativity, this is 10 years after he published his theory of special relativity. The difference between these is that general relativity focus specifically on the force of gravity, and how it affects the behavior of the universe and how gravity interacts with this fabric of space time.

Corinne Caputo 8:13

He published Special Relativity first, yes. Oh, okay. And then he went more general. Exactly. Okay. So in

Moiya McTier 8:21

this theory of general relativity, he included the Einstein field equations, these are, well, it's one equation that can be broken down into like 10 different equations, all of which describe how the shape of the universe depends on the distribution of matter. And you might be thinking, doesn't the shape of anything depend on how matter within it is distributed? Normally, yes, because we are used to thinking about shapes that are composed entirely of matter. But there's also energy in the universe, which is slightly different from matter. So it's important that it's looking at the distribution of matter, because matter is where gravity comes from. So there's, there's the connection between general relativity talks about gravity. And these equations tell you how gravity influences the behavior of the universe. Does that make sense? Yeah, I

Corinne Caputo 9:17

think so. I think I have a grip on that. We'll see how if I can merge the next part with that. Okay, cool.

Moiya McTier 9:23

So I'm calling them Einstein's field equations, because that's what they are. But I think that most people when they hear the word equation, they think of the equations that we had in elementary and middle school, like five plus three equals eight, you know, some sequence of numbers and operators like plus or minus, that gives you a value at the end. That's what an equation is supposed to be to most people, right?

Corinne Caputo 9:52

Yeah, certainly to me. Yeah. Well, that's

Moiya McTier 9:54

not what this field equation

Corinne Caputo 9:57

is like. No, of course not. Why Whatever.

Moiya McTier 10:01

And actually, I encountered this a lot when I was in academia going through my schooling to get my PhD, people would call things equations. And it took me until now to realize that they didn't mean equation in the way that I was used to what they think of as an equation is like a sentence almost in numbers and other symbols that describe a set of conditions that describe a scenario. And when you are trying to solve these equations, the solution is actually the set of conditions under which that statement is true. So all of these people, all of these physicists and scientists in the early 1900s, they looked at Einstein's field equations, and they were trying to solve it, which means not just adding the numbers in the statement, but instead trying to figure out what has to be true for this statement, this equation to be correct.

Corinne Caputo 10:59

I see. Okay, so like the statement is Karina is in a good mood. And the solution is like, She's fabulous. She's slept. She's not alone. She's okay.

Moiya McTier 11:11

Yes. Oh, my God. Yes. Thank you. That's perfect. Okay, there would be symbols, variables that correspond to like, whether you're fed or whether you've slept, okay? Yeah, it's confusing.

Corinne Caputo 11:27

It just means I'm doing science every day trying to get in a good mood. Oh, my

Moiya McTier 11:31

God, honestly. Yes, I know, I know, that was a joke. And you're being a little facetious. But you are doing science, Corinne. So another thing that I want to say about these Einstein Field Equations, is that Einstein himself didn't actually get them. Right. So he was convinced, as were most other scientists at the time, in 1915, that the universe was static that it was standing still neither expanding nor contracting. And he, when he made the equations saw that with our current understanding of gravity, it would only work if the universe was expanding or shrinking. So he added in this extra variable to essentially force the universe to be static. He called that the cosmological constant. And now, astronomers and cosmologists use the cosmological constant to describe the expansion of the universe. So in a way, Einstein was right. But he was also doubly wrong, you know? So

Corinne Caputo 12:33

like we the constant is not that it's constantly still, but that it's constantly not still are not static,

Moiya McTier 12:41

correct? Yeah, we call it a constant. But that that constant is just the variable that we use to describe like the direction of motion of the universe. Okay. So Einstein, not as smart as everyone thinks he is. He put those equations out in 1915. People started trying to solve these equations. And in 1927, a Belgian scientist and Catholic priest named it's, it's a kind of French sounding name, George Lemaitre Lemaitre.

Corinne Caputo 13:14

That sounds exactly right to me.

Moiya McTier 13:16

I'm gonna say it in the way that it would be set in my hometown, George Lemaitre.

Corinne Caputo 13:24

I think he was in cars.

Moiya McTier 13:27

Lemaitre so this Belgian scientist and Catholic priest was credited with finding the big thing solution to Einstein's field equations. And essentially, remember, I said that the solution is the right set of conditions. So he had the genius idea to solve Einstein's field equations with an expanding universe. This was in 1927. And then, over the next four years, he started thinking about an expanding universe, other people started to agree with him. And in 1931, he then concluded that if the universe has been expanding, it must have expanded from a primeval atom. And he was the one who coined that term. So that's the big bang theory in full effect by 1931. Wow,

Corinne Caputo 14:15

that is later than I thought, right?

Moiya McTier 14:17

That a lot of things in science happened later. Yeah,

Corinne Caputo 14:20

I know. Everything I think happened, you know, millions of years ago. I know. The same way I like can't comprehend my parents lives before me. Like I can't comprehend that science was being discovered shortly. You know, before my existence.

Moiya McTier 14:35

The idea of like a time before the internet is as mind bendy as Yes. You know, a time before we knew that there were galaxies. Yes, exactly. So would you like to know the evidence that supported this, this theory that grew in popularity over time? Yes, absolutely. Right. Because you know, I can I can sit here and tell you like, this is what the Big Bang says, and why would you believe me? If I don't tell you the evidence, the data that we use to support our theory

Corinne Caputo 15:03

Exactly, yeah, you could tell me anything and I'm buying it. So it's probably good for you to remind me to get evidence.

Moiya McTier 15:10

Okay, well, you know Corinne, hopefully

Corinne Caputo 15:12

intervention.

Moiya McTier 15:16

You'll learn to look for the for the data behind claims. So there are two big important pieces of evidence that confirm the Big Bang Theory. The first comes from 1929. So this is after Lemaitre to claim the expanding universe, but before he claimed that it all originated in a primeval atom. In 1929, Edwin Hubble, who you might remember from our second episode about galaxies, I do at the same time that he was measuring the distances too far away nebulae, he was also calculating how fast those galaxies were moving. So he was looking at the redshift and blueshift of different galaxies, just redshift. We can do a episode in the future, maybe about redshift, and blueshift. And that phenomenon

Corinne Caputo 16:10

that sounds like The Matrix. Sounds like the premise of it

Moiya McTier 16:14

is a lot less cool than the matrix. Let me let me tell you, it's so much less interesting.

Corinne Caputo 16:19

Okay, well, we're gonna do an episode on the matrix, everybody, and I'm gonna tell the story of

Moiya McTier 16:25

yes, in that story, Keanu Reeves gets to decide if he wants to be redshifted, or blue chips. That way, that's the big decision. So we can do that episode later. But for now, all you need to know is that if a galaxy is red shifted, if it appears to be redder in our telescopes than we expect it to be, that is a sign that the galaxy is moving away from us. And the redder it looks, the faster it is moving away. So Edwin Hubble measured not only the distances to these galaxies, but also how fast they were moving away from us and found that more distant galaxies were moving away from us at faster speeds. Okay. So based on that, he concluded that the universe is expanding. Like that was that was the definitive proof that proved what George Lemaitre found just a couple of years earlier.

Corinne Caputo 17:16

Oh, cool. Okay.

Moiya McTier 17:19

So that's proof for the expanding universe. But what about this idea that the universe was much more compact in earlier times? Well, for that, we look to the discovery from the 1960s of the cosmic microwave background, or the CMB. The CMB is essentially the heat signature left after the Big Bang, and you can see it everywhere. So no matter where we point telescopes in the sky, we would be able to observe the cosmic microwave background, oh, yeah, this shows us the teeny tiny fluctuations in temperature from a moment pretty soon after the Big Bang. It's actually like 400,000 years after the Big Bang, but that is pretty soon trust me on these cosmic scales. And because we can see how the temperature was distributed, we can also learn how matter how stuff was distributed, because where there is more stuff, there is more energy and therefore more heat. So we can compare that signal to our expectations, you know, based on computer models and simulations, or just based on like, what we know about how matter grows, we can are getting a little bit lost, it's okay, I'm gonna find it. Because that signal looks the way we expect it to look under the assumption of a Big Bang model that is proof or evidence to back up the Big Bang Theory. Okay,

Corinne Caputo 18:50

so we have evidence that it's expanding, we have evidence that it was once compacted and then what's the I guess? What piece or a missing evidence that it exploded?

Moiya McTier 19:00

No. I mean, that's, that's pretty much all we need most of the evidence we need. Yeah, we can start looking for more evidence to like gaze more directly at earlier and earlier moments of the Big Bang. But the cosmic microwave background was a huge win for Yeah, this theory for this model.

Corinne Caputo 19:19

Yeah, it sounds like it was trying to think of a sports metaphor here. And I don't know why I would have picked that but I can't an ace in the hole. One of those things.

Moiya McTier 19:28

A homerun is an interesting choice. Me

Corinne Caputo 19:31

establishing myself as a sports person.

Moiya McTier 19:36

Yeah, if there's anything that listeners need to learn about Corinne, it's about sports.

Corinne Caputo 19:41

I love sports. Guys. This is a 10 out of 10. In the Olympics, gymnastics, it's a 10 out.

Moiya McTier 19:50

There was even less substance to that. thought there would be good. That is the amount of substance you can expect us to bring related to sports To this

Corinne Caputo 20:00

absolutely

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Moiya McTier 21:00

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Corinne Caputo 22:20

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Moiya McTier 22:53

Pale Blue Pod is an independent podcast. That means that Corinne and I rely on financial support from listeners like you to keep this whole podcast engine going. And one of the very best ways that you could support us if you have the money to spare is by joining our Patreon over at patreon[dot]com/palebluepod. For just about $1 an episode you can gain access to our director's commentary, which is a list of extra reading and resources and maybe even some fact checking that I make every time I review an episode from all around audio genius Mischa Stanton. At higher tiers, you can get your name added to our patron star chart where we have the names and stellar properties of all of the amazing people who support us. At an even higher tier, Corinne will write you a fake horoscope every single month. In case you're on the fence, you should know that the first 50 people to sign up for our Patreon will be eligible to receive a signed copy of my book, The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy. So sign up at patreon[dot]com/palebluepod. I would really appreciate it, Corinne would really appreciate it, all the other listeners would really appreciate it because it's. again, support from people like you that make it possible for us to make this podcast in the first place. And I will reiterate the first 50 people to become one of our patrons will be eligible to receive a signed copy of my book, The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy, I would love to send a copy of it to you. So go on over to patreon[dot]com/palebluepod. Thanks.

So you you might note, Corinne, that the cosmic microwave background is the biggest evidence we have for the Big Bang, but that the cosmic microwave background is a signal left over from 400,000 years after the Big Bang. This episode is about the first three minutes of the universe which is way less than 400,000 years.

Corinne Caputo 24:49

Yes, you could argue that it's much less much,

Moiya McTier 24:53

much less. So now we're getting into the part of the universe the time zone of the universe where we're relying on particle physicists and like theoretical physicists work. So I will tell you that we are leaving my comfy happy space where all the stars and galaxies are. And we are going way, way back to the beginning of the universe. But we still have a pretty good understanding of the order that things would have happened in. Okay, yeah. So so now we're about to get into these teeny, tiny fractions of a second after the Big Bang, because our understanding starts at what's called a plunk time. That's P L A N C, K. A Planck time is the amount of time it takes a photon. So this thing moving at the speed of light to travel a plunk distance, because this is the way we define things in science, it's all nested.

Corinne Caputo 25:50

Oh, funny.

Moiya McTier 25:51

I know. I know. And it makes it when you're trying to explain this stuff. It makes me feel so ridiculous. Because yeah, when you're defining something, you're not supposed to use the word in the definition, right? Defining a plug time, it'd be like, who's the amount of time it takes to drill for the plug does that so that's, that's not satisfying.

Corinne Caputo 26:08

That's not helpful. Also, in any kind of, like old school 90s movie battle against a bully here, you are like saying plunk, they're likely they are nerds. You're

Moiya McTier 26:22

right, it is a very nerdy sounding word. Yeah. So we can we can measure back to a Planck time after the universe started. This is the smallest unit of time that modern scientists can measure. And at that time, during what we call the plunk era, all of the four fundamental forces of the universe are unified, they are essentially smushed together. Because all of the particles, all of the forces, all of the quantum fields, that dictate these different forces are are coupled, there is not enough space in the universe yet for them to act separately from each other. Okay? Corinne, how, how much do you feel like you know about the four fundamental forces of the universe? Oh, my

Corinne Caputo 27:12

God, the four fundamental forces gonna say gravity is one of them. Hell,

Moiya McTier 27:17

yeah. You got

Corinne Caputo 27:18

that? And the pushing and pulling,

Moiya McTier 27:23

I believe you got another in you? What about what we use to see?

Corinne Caputo 27:28

Vision eyes? The force of eyes? Force, bi force and then touch and smell and do?

Moiya McTier 27:39

What about light? Have we talked about what light is and like, the spectrum that light falls on? I know

Corinne Caputo 27:46

from probably my dad, but like light is it's like a wave, right?

Moiya McTier 27:53

A wave and, and

Corinne Caputo 27:55

a, you got it sound.

Moiya McTier 28:02

Very different from sound. So light is both a wave and a particle? A particle? Yes, that particle is called a photon. And a photon can have lots of different discrete energies. So you'll have some photons that are at the energy of, let's say, 100 Hertz. And that's the only energy that's the only frequency that that photon exists at. And then there's another photon that's at like 200, Hertz, and so on. Okay. Okay. So those are the particles, all of these particles have energies that exist along the electromagnetic spectrum. Ah, yes, yes, because one of the other forces is the electromagnetic force. And then we have the the two nuclear forces, there's the strong nuclear force, which is essentially responsible for nuclear fusion happening in the cores of stars it love like sticks the different small particles together, and you have the weak nuclear force, which among other things, is responsible for particles decaying into other particles? So like, if you have a neutron, for example, it can decay through different processes into like a proton and a neutrino or whatever. Well, yeah, like, there are forces out there in the universe that just be taking particles and turning them into other types of particles. This is what you can't trust the universe. Things are just spontaneously turning into other types of particles. Yeah, it's wild out here. How

Corinne Caputo 29:35

am I supposed to trust that? What happened or figure out what happened if this wasn't always?

Moiya McTier 29:41

Luckily, we do understand many of the processes that makes particles decay into others. So those are the four forces gravity, electromagnetic, weak and strong.

Corinne Caputo 29:52

It's so funny how we sometimes use words like plunk and then sometimes we just say strong and weak.

Moiya McTier 29:59

Yes. Oh, Wait until we do an episode about the names of different telescopes, I wouldn't just rip the astronomy community to shreds for naming something the Very Large Array, or the extremely large telescope like I fucking hate that.

Corinne Caputo 30:16

That is so funny. What is

Moiya McTier 30:18

wrong with us? Oh, okay, so the plunk era, back to the first three minutes, we're actually back at the first 10 to the minus 43 seconds. So imagine a fraction and there was a one on top and on the bottom, it is one followed by 43 zeros, oh my god. So we're talking the scientist amount of time, all of the four fundamental forces were operating together. And so like nothing could really happen in that timeframe of the universe, but starting at 10 to the minus 38 seconds. So another very small amount of time has passed. Now we're into the gut era, the G ut era or the grand unified theory era. Yeah, at this time, the force of gravity uncouples. From the other three forces, you have gravity, and then you have this super force, that is the weak and strong nuclear forces and the electromagnetic force combined. That decoupling we think, kind of triggered V inflationary epic. This is an amount of time where the universe ballooned, it like blew up, it went from something the size of like a nucleus of an atom to something the size of our solar system. That's a difference of like, 10 to the power of 60. Whoa, yeah, it got really big, very quickly. Well, I mean, it's still much smaller than the size of the universe today. But compared to where it started, it got quite large. But keep in mind that the universe is still at like billions of degrees Kelvin, it is extremely hot in this universe. So we're not talking about the cold emptiness of space that we see today, we are talking essentially about a burning ball of plasma with basic fundamental particles all swirling around, actually, we're not even at the particle stage yet. So so let me get there. Right now we're at 10 to the minus 36 seconds after the universe after that, after inflation, the strong nuclear force on couples from the other three. So now we have the force of gravity, the strong nuclear force, and then the electroweak force. That's the weak and electromagnetic forces working together.

Corinne Caputo 32:44

That's a lot to do.

Moiya McTier 32:47

I feel like this is just this is just a list of different stages. But I feel like it is really interesting that these four forces, like separated from each other at different time. Yeah,

Corinne Caputo 32:56

that's what I was wondering is why did this why did the strong force go first?

Moiya McTier 33:02

Hmm, yeah. Like, what determines the order that they voted? Yeah, that's a really good question. It's because all of these forces operate at different scales. And they all have different strengths. Like, gravity is the one that we talk about the most, but it's actually the weakest of these forces. Ah, okay. And the strong nuclear force is the strongest of these forces, but it only works on on very small scales, like smaller than the size of an iron atom. So when the universe is expanding, during that inflationary period, different scales become relevant to the universe. And so different forces like kick in, depending on the scales at which they operate. Whoa,

Corinne Caputo 33:43

okay.

Moiya McTier 33:46

So now, we are at 10 to the minus 10 seconds. So I guess we're at one 10,000,000,000th of a second. Well, I think, yeah, particles, like protons and neutrons start to form at this time. But they're those are like, that's matter. Antimatter also starts to form. So you have protons and antiprotons forming and neutrons and anti neutrons forming. And when you have a proton and an anti proton, they cancel each other out. And so scientists aren't sure why, but for some reason, the universe produced ever so slightly more matter than it did antimatter. So the particles one out and there were protons and neutrons and electrons floating around in their plasma soup early in the universe,

Corinne Caputo 34:40

okay.

Moiya McTier 34:41

So were we just created particles were at 10 to the minus 10 seconds, we just created particles, and then for roughly like three minutes after that, we are in a phase of nucleosynthesis, where the protons and the neutrons started coming together to form atomic nuclei. At the end of this three minutes, most of the nuclei were formed, most of those nuclei were hydrogen, and some of them were helium. So it was like 75%, hydrogen and 25% helium. But at that time, it was still too hot for the electrons to grab onto these nuclei. So if you remember back to your high school physics or chemistry class, all of these atoms have a nucleus made out of protons and neutrons, and then there's a cloud of electrons flying around them. Well, these these atoms, they don't have their electrons yet, the electrons are floating around in this plasma soup. And that actually has the unfortunate consequence of blocking photons, these particles of light from escaping the early universe, they kept like bumping into electrons and getting scattered that way. So the universe is opaque at this time, we cannot see what was happening. And it took 400,000 years for the universe to cool down enough that essentially the electrons calmed down and joined the nuclei of these atoms. So we formed neutral atoms for the first time, and the photons no longer bounced off of electrons, so they were able to roam free. And we have a transparent universe. Wow,

Corinne Caputo 36:19

that's so hard for me to imagine. A universe that's,

Moiya McTier 36:23

that's opaque

Corinne Caputo 36:24

that can't be seen. Yeah. It is a weird

Moiya McTier 36:27

thing to think about. Because you have to imagine the actual journey that these photons take Yeah, to us. Yeah. Would you like to guess what temperature the universe had, at that moment, which we call recombination, the moment of recombination, which is silly, because the electrons and nuclei weren't combined before? Why are we calling it recombination when it hasn't been combined? before? I don't know. Okay,

Corinne Caputo 36:55

well, it was extremely hot. I'll talk in Fahrenheit, which is 1 billion degrees. Oh, my God.

Moiya McTier 37:03

No, not quite. Yeah, it was around 3000 Kelvin. So it was about 1000 times hotter than it is now. That's about 5000 degrees Fahrenheit. Wow. So those were the first atoms and then the first stars didn't form until 300 million years after the Big Bang. And that's when you get into the part of astrophysics that

Corinne Caputo 37:27

I'm more familiar with. Yeah, what was happening in between?

Moiya McTier 37:31

The atoms were just chillin, I guess, figuring

Corinne Caputo 37:35

out what they want to do.

Moiya McTier 37:38

Yeah, I mean, the universe would have been to, even after the formation of these neutral atoms, that would be mostly hydrogen and helium gas. The universe was too hot was too warm for those clouds of gas to condense into stars because you need to actually cool down a cloud of gas before you can trigger the star formation process. You know, cold makes things contract. Yes. Right. Me things that are hot. They expand. So you need you need a chill breeze to trigger star formation.

Corinne Caputo 38:12

Okay, that makes sense. It's the season of stars. It's fall. The cool winds coming in.

Moiya McTier 38:20

Oh my god. Yes. Yeah. Last month you couldn't have made any stars but listeners this month you can you you start those star making factories. Nothing you can try it. Just cold enough to start contracting some gas clouds

Corinne Caputo 38:34

just in time for the holidays. The holiday rush.

Moiya McTier 38:38

Yeah, so that's the first three minutes of the universe Corinne, how are you feeling? Do you have any questions? How's your? How's your anxiety?

Corinne Caputo 38:45

It is, you know, when I can feel my brain doing it immediately. It's like we're not we're gonna stop thinking about that. Like, no, no. It has to, it's on a scale that is so hard to comprehend. It is so much more productive than me is another side of it.

Moiya McTier 39:02

Look, when you are a human you're not supposed to be able to do this. Universe. No.

Corinne Caputo 39:08

I just don't think I do much in three minutes.

Moiya McTier 39:11

No, I mean, either. I could like, you know, like a really successful poop for three minutes. Yeah, anything else takes longer to be to be good, but a long poop I think is less satisfying.

Corinne Caputo 39:24

If you put a lot of pressure on me I can maybe do something. I'm trying to think of anything I can do three minutes probably do like make a smoothie. I can make a mess. I can make a big mess. Yeah. Oh,

Moiya McTier 39:37

hell yeah. We can make it which

Corinne Caputo 39:38

is kind of what the universe did. Absolutely. Yeah,

Moiya McTier 39:41

I actually exactly that. It made a big mess. It created a big thermodynamically complicated system where entropy was indeed, always increasing.

Corinne Caputo 39:53

I can do that. I can do that on a small scale in my kitchen. Yeah. You

Moiya McTier 39:57

mentioned scale earlier as something that, like brought some anxiety or overwhelmed you? Is it the scale of of space? Yes like distance? Or is it the scale of time?

Corinne Caputo 40:10

I think it's both. I think it's that things have existed for so long and will for so long and I am but the smallest blip and I don't really think about my importance often like that doesn't really bother me. But there's something just like inherently a little like fearful in oh my god I, what am I doing here? What are we doing here?

Moiya McTier 40:32

Yeah, I like to think back to, you know, this cloth, the fabric of space time. And each one of us is just a single stitch in this cloth. Yes, but we were still part of it like we are still a natural part of it. That

Corinne Caputo 40:49

does make me feel better. Okay, good.

Moiya McTier 40:53

Because I know I understand the urge to get overwhelmed and anxious when you start thinking about these big scales. I really do. But we you know, these big scales aren't going to hurt us.

Corinne Caputo 41:03

That's true. That's true.

Moiya McTier 41:04

It is not Elian, they can't get it. I have to let our heart rates Yeah, go up because of it. Do you have any? Oh, no questions. Anything that you want to

Corinne Caputo 41:15

clarify? Yes. Okay. So I do have the questions that everyone's got on their minds. What came before this big bang?

Moiya McTier 41:24

Oh, we're starting easy already. No, no.

Corinne Caputo 41:27

I'm like, Oh, great. We can breeze through this.

Moiya McTier 41:29

This is like the hardest. Absolutely not. This is. This is I think, one of the hardest questions to possibly answer and it veers sharply into philosophy. Okay. And unfortunately, like, I don't think any of these answers are very satisfying, because it's either nothing existed before the Big Bang. But then you have to start asking like, oh, well, what started it? What was the catalyst? But then there's another equally valid School of philosophical thought that's like, it doesn't matter what came before it, it just it just started. Before this, I was reading about Stephen Hawking had this like, starting point hypothesis, that if you imagine the universe is shaped through space and time as as a shuttlecock as, as like the the birdie, that you that you play with, you know, that has a rounded edge. So at the very end of it, it does start from zero, but we don't have a hard time understanding that it just started and another person described this same theory is like, Would you ask what was south of the South Pole? No, like, it's, it's round. It's a spherical surface. So it just like the South Pole just starts it is the starting point. So interesting. You know, I don't think either of those answers is very satisfying. One potentially satisfying answer that I don't think is correct. Has to do with the potential ways that the universe could end and one of them is that the universe expands, but then slows down the expansion until it stops and then shrinks back in on itself until it gets to that single point again, and repeats, and then it repeats. Yeah, it rebounds. And in that scenario, what came before the Big Bang was just another universe, you know, where we're in this constant cycle of expanding and contracting, expanding and contracting. Wow. So yeah, but we don't think that that's right. So I don't think there is a satisfying answer to what came before the Big Bang. We don't have a concept of time before the Big Bang. So science can't answer this question. Whoa,

Corinne Caputo 43:31

I'll figure it out and get back to you. Okay, cool. Yeah.

Moiya McTier 43:36

Let me know when you figure it out, and we can contact the American Astronomical Society. We'll get you your credit.

Corinne Caputo 43:44

Okay. No problem. Okay, so then, I think what I'm thinking about is like, what came before it, like, what was it existing in? Like, where did this Big Bang happen?

Moiya McTier 43:56

Yes. Okay. So remember that the Big Bang started with all of the stuff, all of the, I guess at that point, it was just energy of the universe in an infinitesimally small point. Okay. So then that infinitesimally small point expanded, which means that the Big Bang happened everywhere, because the Big Bang happened in that point, which then expanded to the universe we see now. And that's why you can see the cosmic microwave background in any direction, because the signal from the Big Bang is all around us because the entire universe experienced the Big Bang, whoa, we actually have this thing in astronomy called the cosmological principle. And it's like the foundational set of rules that underpins almost all of cosmology, and it tells us that the universe as we observe it is both isotropic and homogeneous, which means the universe looks the same from every single point within the universe. First, and the universe looks the same in all directions. Not me.

Corinne Caputo 45:04

I have a good sign.

Moiya McTier 45:08

You are not isotropic and homogeneous. Oh, no, not me. That's good. I don't think I would want to see a truly isotropic human being no. Sounds like one of those like terrifying, biblically accurate descriptions of angels from the Old Testament are

Corinne Caputo 45:23

so funny. Yeah. What would that person look like? If I'm imagining like, this is not the answer at all. But like Professor quarrel in the Harry first Harry Potter movie, where it's like, there's a face on both sides.

Moiya McTier 45:35

face on all sides, it would just be a ball of face it was.

Corinne Caputo 45:42

It was sick. Okay, so what does this have to do with dark energy? We're

Moiya McTier 45:49

still trying to figure it out. So sometimes people say that dark energy is what's fueling the expansion of the universe. And that's actually not true. The universe was expanding and would expand even without dark energy, it expanded at the beginning of the universe when there wasn't dark energy present, or it was present, but it wasn't dominating the motion and behavior of the universe. So dark energy is not responsible for the expansion. Dark energy is responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe. And we're still trying to figure out what dark energy is one hypothesis out there is that kind of like gravity is a natural consequence, or it's like inherent to matter. You know, if you have matter, you will have gravity. Some people believe in this force, a fifth fundamental force called quintessence, and that says that something inherent to the lack of matter is this Quintessence force. So when there's matter, gravity will pull it together, when there is no matter. This dark energy will push things apart. Interesting. And that's just one hypothesis. I really like it, because it's a nice symmetry. But yeah, that is just one hypothesis, we are still actively trying to figure out what dark energy is yet I do think that we'll have we'll have more of an answer. Soon, I would be willing to put money on us knowing more about dark energy on big scales in the next 20 years.

Corinne Caputo 47:27

Oh my god, that I love that. I love hearing that. Because I think when I hear about it, there's part of me that's like, I can't believe here, I am just gonna die not knowing what that is. As if I've dedicated my life to this, like any number of scientists have. Like, I'm better off knowing nothing about it.

Moiya McTier 47:44

You are super invested. Well, Corinne after this podcast, you're gonna be you might be pretty invested.

Corinne Caputo 47:50

That's true. That's true. I might have to switch my life around. Okay, so I'm gonna figure out what came before the Big Bang, and I'm gonna figure out what dark energy is. And I'm gonna get back to you. Thank

Moiya McTier 47:59

you. It was very small, achievable to do I don't Yeah,

Corinne Caputo 48:03

I'll loop back. Oh,

Moiya McTier 48:05

hey, Corinne, did you know that I made a Twitter account for the pod?

Corinne Caputo 48:09

I saw I followed me. Everyone go follow. So

Moiya McTier 48:14

yeah, I bring that up because listener you can go follow us on Twitter @PaleBluePod, which is the name of the show so we've made it easy for you. Please go follow us there. And please go follow me on various social media platforms @GoAstroMo.

Corinne Caputo 48:30

I am also on Twitter and Instagram @corintellectual which is just intellectual with the COR in the beginning.

Moiya McTier 48:38

I love that. It's, it's a good is that a portmanteau?

Corinne Caputo 48:42

You know, maybe

Moiya McTier 48:46

you'll also check on that

Corinne Caputo 48:48

and also check on that. Okay, I have three takeaways from this.

Moiya McTier 48:52

Good. Oh, yeah. It's a good rule of three here. Okay, well, if we have nothing else to say about the origin of this grand universe that we all call home, then I will sign off and tell you to stay spacey listeners. Yeah, stay spacey around.

Pale Blue Pod was created by Moiya McTier and Corrine Caputo with help from the Multitude productions team. Our theme music is by Evan Johnston and our cover art is by Shea McMullin. Our audio editing is handled by the incomparable Mischa Stanton.

Corinne Caputo 49:29

Stay in touch with us and the universe by following @PaleBluePod on Twitter and Instagram. Or check out our website palebluepod[dot]com. We're a member of Multitude, an independent podcast collective and production studio. If you like Pale Blue Pod, you will love the other shows that live on our website at multitude[dot]productions.

Moiya McTier 49:48

If you want to support Pale Blue Pod financially, join our community over at patreon[dot]com/palebluepod. For just about $1 per episode, you get a shout out on one of our shows and have access to director's commentary for each episode. The very best way though to help Pale Blue Pod grow is to share it with your friends. So send this episode, this link, to one person who you think will like it and we will appreciate you for forever.

Corinne Caputo 50:14

Thanks for listening to Pale Blue Pod. You'll hear us again next week.

Moiya McTier 50:17

Bye!