The story of creating the Universe in six days-2

 

The Six Day's Ephemeris summarizes A Brief History of Time as follows:

 

Working backwards from the present state of the Universe, scientists hypothesize that it must have begun as a single point of infinite density and finite time that began to expand. According to the theory, after the initial expansion, the Universe cooled sufficiently to allow the formation of subatomic particles, and later simple atoms. Giant clouds of these primordial elements later gravitationally coalesced to form stars and galaxies.

 

This all started around 13.8 billion years ago, and is thus considered the Universe's age. Scientists have constructed a timeline of events that began with the Big Bang and has led to the current state of cosmic evolution by testing theoretical principles, experiments involving particle accelerators and high-energy states, and astronomical studies that have observed the deep Universe.

 

The earliest times of the Universe, however, ranging from approximately 10^ (-43) to 10^ (-11) seconds after the Big Bang, are the subject of much speculation. Given that the known laws of physics could not exist at this time, it is difficult to imagine how the Universe could have been governed. Furthermore, no experiments that can generate the types of energies involved have been conducted. Even so, many theories about what happened in that first instant of time exist, with many of them being compatible. The Six Day Ephemeris can be summed up as follows:

 

The Day of Dawn:

 The Big Bang Day.

In the beginning, there was a single primeval atom outside the frame of space and time, which consisted of all the matter and energy of our current Universe. Also known as the Planck Epoch (or Planck Era); this was the earliest known period of the Universe. During this Era, it is believed that the quantum effects of gravity dominated physical interactions.

 

This Planck period of time extends from point 0 to approximately 10 ^ (-43) seconds, and is so named because it can only be measured in Planck time^[1]. Due to the extreme heat and density of matter, the state of the Universe was highly unstable. It thus began to expand and cool, leading to the manifestation of the fundamental forces of physics.

 

For reasons that we do not know, and perhaps will never know, this Primeval Atom went through a superfast inflation. From approximately 10^ (-43) second to 10^ (-36) second, the Universe began to cross transition temperatures. It is here that the fundamental forces that govern the Universe are believed to have begun separating from each other. The first step in this was the force of gravitation separating from gauge forces, which account for strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism. Then, from 10^ (-36) to 10^ (-11) seconds after the Big Bang, the temperature of the Universe was low enough (1028 K) that the forces of electromagnetism (strong force) and weak nuclear forces (weak interaction) were able to separate as well, forming two distinct forces.

 

Thus, the clock of time began to tickle. If we had a time machine today that allowed us to go back in time about 13.8 billion years, we would return to the point from which the Universe began. No one knows what happened in or before the first second of the Universe's birth, as our known cosmic laws do not apply to that era.

 

As the density and temperature of the Universe decreased, so did the energy of each particle, and phase transitions continued until the fundamental forces of physics and elementary particles changed into their current form. This period is less speculative because particle energies would have dropped to values that particle physics experiments can obtain.

 

Scientists believe that about 10^ (-11) seconds after the Big Bang, particle energies dropped considerably. At about 10^ (-6) seconds, quarks and gluons combined to form baryons such as protons and neutrons, and a small excess of quarks over anti quarks led to a small excess of baryons over anti baryons.

 

Since temperatures were not high enough to create new proton-antiproton pairs (or neutron-antineutron pairs), mass annihilation immediately followed, leaving just one in 1010 of the original protons and neutrons and none of their antiparticles. A similar process happened at about 1 second after the Big Bang for electrons and positrons. After these annihilation, the remaining protons, neutrons and electrons were no longer moving relativistic and the energy density of the Universe was dominated by photons – and to a lesser extent, neutrinos. In this stage nucleosynthesis also began, it has taken place in the interval from roughly 10 seconds to 20 minutes after the Big Bang, and is calculated to be responsible for the formation of most of the Universe's helium as the isotope helium-4 (4He), along with small amounts of the hydrogen isotope deuterium (2H or D).

 

Thanks to temperatures dropping to 1 billion kelvins and the energy densities dropping considerably, neutrons and protons began to combine to form the Universe's first deuterium (a stable isotope of Hydrogen) and helium atoms. However, most of the Universe's protons remained uncombined as hydrogen nuclei.

 

The Second Day:

Let it be light.

 

This day begins 379,000 years after the birth of the Universe. Electrons combined with their nuclei to form atoms (again, mostly hydrogen), while the radiation decoupled from matter and continued to expand through space, largely unimpeded. This radiation is now known to be what constitutes the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), which today is the oldest light in the Universe.

 

As the CMB expanded, it gradually lost density and energy, and is currently estimated to have a temperature of 2.7260 ± 0.0013 K (-270.424 °C/ -454.763 °F) and an energy density of 0.25 eV/cm3 (or 4.005×10-14 J/m3; 400–500 photons/cm3). The CMB can be seen in all directions at a distance of roughly 13.8 billion light years, but estimates of its actual distance are at about 46 billion light years from the centre of the Universe. This background radiation is the most important trace that remains from the first and second days of creation.

 

Inflation continued at its superfast speed, the inflation fragments continued to diverge thus continuing to weave space and time, the Universe at that time had cooled to about 3000 degrees Kelvin (about 2700 degrees Celsius), which allowed the electrons to be attracted to their protons allowing them to appear for the first time in a state of extreme agitation that led to the emission of a torrent of photons, allowing the first visible rays of light to appear.

Cosmic microwave background (CMB, CMBR)

The map of the Universe above shows the Universe's first emergence, or cosmic radiation background, printed on the sky when the Universe was 379,000 years old. The chart shows tiny temperature fluctuations across the sky, corresponding to a hue from white to black. The dark regions are cooler compared to the light regions. This map will bear the seeds of the structure of the world in the following years and how stars and galaxies are distributed.

 

The Third Day:

The birth of the first stars ending the era of darkness.

 

Over the next several billion years, the slightly denser regions of the Universe's almost uniformly distributed matter began to become gravitationally attracted to each other, causing them to grow even denser, forming gas clouds, stars, galaxies, and the other astronomical structures that we regularly observe today; this is known as the Structure Epoch, because it was during this time that the modern Universe began to take shape. This consists of visible matter distributed in structures ranging in size from stars and planets to galaxies, galaxy clusters, and superclusters - where matter is concentrated - separated by enormous distances and containing only a few galaxies.

 

The details of this process depend on the amount and type of matter in the Universe, with cold dark matter, warm dark matter, hot dark matter, and baryonic matter being the four suggested types. However, the Lambda-Cold Dark Matter model (Lambda-CDM), in which the dark matter particles moved slowly compared to the speed of light, is considered to be the standard model of Big Bang cosmology, as it best fits the available data.

 

According to this model, cold dark matter, which is considered unseen matter, accounts for 23% of the Universe, while baryonic matter, which is visible matter, accounts for only 4.6% of the Universe.

 

The Universe began to take its current form at this stage, with galaxies containing billions of stars surrounded by billions of planets, some of which were like Earth, preparing to incubate life in the future.

 

The stars play an important role in nature; in addition to being lamps that illuminate the darkness of the Universe, they are the source of all known natural elements, ranging from helium to manganese, as well as iron and other heavier metals such as cobalt, nickel, and copper. They are created by extremely harsh cosmic conditions, such as the explosion of supernovae stars, which ends their lives with a massive explosion that disperses their metal-based fragments in space. Stars, like our sun, also give birth to planets from their formative matter and provide energy to those planets. Consider how beautiful the stars are.

 

The Fourth Day:

The birth of the Earth within the solar system.

 

More than nine billion Earth years passed after the Universe appeared out of nowhere, when the sun and its planets began to form amongst the hydrogen clouds accumulating in the sky.

 

The sun is a medium-sized star; there are stars much larger and stars much smaller than the sun. The stars differ in color and brightness between white, yellow, and red, just as precious pearls differ in color and brightness. To enjoy the view of these treasures on the sky page, all you need to do is carefully observe the clear sky through a well-developed telescope.

 

In contrast to billions of planets scattered throughout the Universe that are hostile to Earthly life, the planet Earth, which is our home planet in the solar system, possesses all of the ingredients and conditions required for the emergence of life. This does not rule out the possibility of intelligent life on other distant planets, though we cannot prove it yet...

 

If Earth had formed 20% farther from the Sun, it would still be within the traditional CHZ (Circumstellar Habitable Zone), but it would have been subjected to a higher rate of asteroid and comet impact, more gravitational perturbations to its orbit and rotation, and more intense exposure to interstellar clouds and cosmic ray flux, as well as requiring more carbon dioxide in its atmosphere to maintain liquid surface water. Similar arguments can be made for the host star, the sun, and its position within the Milky Way, as well as the type of galaxy that encircles the solar system.

 

If we change one parameter, it is rare that we can change another to compensate for any negative effects on life. Astrobiologists are discovering that processes that affect planetary habitability are intertwined in a complex web that imposes severe constraints as they continue to learn about the formation and long-term evolution of planetary systems. Consider the following: The four fundamental forces that dominate the Universe, namely the electromagnetic force, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and the universal gravity force, are tuned to the levels required for atoms and consequently everything to exist.

 

The same critical circumstances that enable us to exist also put us in the best overall position to make scientific discoveries. We can say that the same conditions that make Earth suitable for intelligent life also make it suitable for viewing and examining the Universe as a whole. Searching for habitable planets entails not only looking for planets that could support Earthly life in the galaxy, but also ensuring that these habitable planets have the best overall conditions for scientific discovery, including the ability to observe the distant Universe.

 

If we were in a spiral arm, the surrounding area of space would be cloudy due to dust and other objects, similar to a cloudy day in Seattle. It would be difficult to see the planets, let alone other stars, in many places. The most important scientific discoveries of the twentieth century would never have been made if the Earth and solar system had been located somewhere else in the sky.

 

When life first emerged on Earth, about 3.8 billion years ago, it was a primitive process that resulted from the assembly of a few nucleic acids. However, the mechanism by which these acids accumulated and caused the emergence of life is still unknown. Such organic molecules have been observed in environments other than Earth; they were discovered in the spectral signatures of stars and gas clouds, as well as in the (Murchison) meteorite that crashed to Earth in 1969 and contained 92 different amino acids, the majority of which had never been observed on Earth. However, the origin of life's mystery remains unsolved; how could a chain of amino acids (so) transform into a living organism with a metabolic system that turns food into energy?

 

Over the past 3.5 billion years, the number, size, shape, and geographical placement of the continents and their associated continental shelves has gradually delivered the just-right tidal torques to slow Earth's rotation rate to 24 hours precisely within the narrow time window in which advanced civilization is possible.

 

Life on Earth was not immune to difficulties, as it was subjected to long ice ages and the collision of the Earth with massive comets descending from the sky, which resulted in the extinction of the giant breeds of dinosaurs that once roamed the planet. But life was steadfast and triumphant in every crisis, reappearing in various types and new forms compatible with environmental changes. All of this paved the way for the appearance of what is now known as the human erectus more than 2 million years ago.

 

The Fifth Day:

The emergence of present-day hominins.

 

Human-like subspecies, who were highly wise and intelligent, appeared throughout Central Asia and Europe; their cousins who had remained in Africa evolved into modern humans. Humans began leaving Africa and spreading to the world about 100,000 years ago.

 

Archaeologists today have strong evidence pointing to an astonishing leap in human intelligence that occurred between 100,000 and 60,000 years ago, indicated by paintings discovered inside some caves in these regions.

  

Life has adapted to celebrate the emergence of modern humans.

 

The Sixth Day:

Man's First Mind's Adventure and the Beginning of Civilization.

 

The first signs of civilization appeared around 10,000 years ago, when people in the Middle East began to grow edible crops near the courses of great rivers, necessitating their settlement in one location near their crops. The nomadic way of life was gradually replaced by permanent camps, resulting in a more stable life. This was followed by the domestication of animals in order to use them as modes of transportation or sources of food and clothing.

 

Large permanent settlements, such as Jericho and Konya, appeared in the fossil monuments; these early settlements were not yet true cities, but rather disorganized groups of villages with few signs of social relations, wealth, or regimes. The emergence of inter-people trade marked the beginning of the great civilization leap.

The first real civilization cities appeared around 5200 years ago in several locations across the Middle East, when fossils revealed clear evidence of the emergence of social stratification and a ruling elite wielding wealth and power, and thus human civilization began to creep on the margins of history.

 

Most of the characteristics of today's world were born with the invention of writing and the beginning of recording human knowledge, including central governments based on army power, institutions, religion, patriarchy, monetary systems, extreme wealth and extreme poverty, large-scale agriculture, trading networks, and great empires. Then, in many other parts of the world, such as China, India, Egypt, Peru, Crete, and Mexico, extended human civilization appeared.

 

With the exception of name and location changes, this pattern of human civilization has not changed substantially over the past 5000 years. Let us finally ponder Man's future in the Universe:

What’s next?

 

Questions about a potential endpoint naturally arise when it is hypothesized that the universe had a beginning. Does it follow that the Universe will expand indefinitely if it started as a tiny point of infinite density and then began to expand?

 

Since the argument over which universe-model is correct first arose, cosmologists' main focus has been on finding an answer to this question. Before the discovery of Dark Energy in the 1990s, when the Big Bang Theory was already widely accepted, cosmologists had settled on two scenarios as the most likely explanations for the evolution of our universe.

 

In the first scenario, known as the "Big Crunch," the Universe will reach its maximum size before collapsing in on itself. This will only be possible if the Universe's mass density exceeds the critical density. In other words, the Universe will eventually contract if the density of matter remains at or above a certain value (1-3x10^-26 kg of matter per m3).

 

If the density of the Universe were equal to or less than the critical density, the expansion would slow but never stop. In this scenario, known as the "Big Freeze," the Universe would continue to expand until star formation ceased due to the consumption of all interstellar gas in each galaxy. Meanwhile, all existing stars would die and turn into white dwarfs, neutron stars, or black holes.

 

Collisions between these black holes would result in mass accumulating into larger and larger black holes over time. The average temperature of the Universe would approach absolute zero, and black holes would vanish after emitting their final Hawking radiation. Finally, the Universe's entropy would grow to the point where no organized form of energy could be extracted from it -a scenario known as "heat death".

 

More and more of the Universe will pass beyond our event horizon (the CMB, the outer limit of what we can see), becoming invisible to us, according to contemporary observations, which include the existence of Dark Energy and its impact on cosmic expansion. Although the end result is not yet known, "heat death" is also thought to be a likely outcome in this scenario.

 

Other explanations for dark energy, known as phantom energy theories, predict that the ever-expanding universe will eventually rip apart galaxy clusters, stars, planets, atoms, and even matter itself. The "Big Rip" scenario holds that the universe will ultimately perish due to its own expansion.^[1]

 

Finally: The Universe expansion continues, while the time to leave Earth has arrived: "Humans must leave Earth within the next few centuries if they are to survive," declared the eminent theoretical physicist Stephen William Hawking in the months preceding his death in 2018. Hawking, regarded as one of the most famous theoretical physicists of his generation, believed that life on Earth could end in a disaster, such as when the Earth collides with a massive meteor, or when robots (or artificial intelligence) control humans, or when aliens from other planets invade the Earth. He also warned that overpopulation, anti-human hostility, and climate change could wreak havoc on Earth's life, and that if our species was to survive, it needed to create new life in space. One of Hawking's greatest fears for the Earth was global warming, which he warned, "Our natural resources are being depleted at an alarming rate" and that we are "giving our planet the catastrophic gift of climate change". He predicted that if we do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the Earth will one day resemble Venus, which has a surface temperature of 460 degrees Celsius (mainly because of Carbon Dioxide accumulation in its atmosphere). He pointed out that this is not science fiction, but rather a matter governed by physical laws^[2].

The Six Day’s Ephemeris, a divine chronicle of cosmic history, is eloquently encapsulated in the holy Quran, specifically within Surah 57, Verse 4. Allow me to present an eloquent rendition of this verse:

“He, the Creator, masterfully sculpted the heavens and earth in a span of six days, thereafter establishing His divine presence above the Throne. He possesses intimate knowledge of all that burrows into the earth and all that sprouts forth from it, of all that descends from the heavens and all that ascends therein. His omnipresence accompanies you, regardless of where you may be. And Allah, the All-Seeing, is ever watchful of your actions.”

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[1] . Matt Williams, what is the Big Bang Theory?  Universe Today, DECEMBER 18, 2015.

[2] . Mike Wall, Stephen Hawking Warns: Humanity May Have Less Than 600 Years to Leave Earth; LIVE SCIENCE, November 13, 2017 10:21 am ET

 

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[1] . Planck time is the time it takes light to travel one Planck length, which is around a hundredth of a millionth of a trillionth of the diameter of a proton, according to Symmetry magazine.