The document provides a summary of modern scientific theories about the origins of the universe from the Big Bang to the formation of stars and galaxies. It discusses how after the Big Bang around 13 billion years ago, the universe rapidly expanded from an incredibly small and hot size. Around 300,000 years later, the first atoms like hydrogen and helium formed as the universe continued expanding and cooling. Gravity eventually pulled matter together, forming dense clouds that collapsed under their own weight and spawned the first stars and galaxies. Our own solar system formed around 4.6 billion years ago from the debris of the Sun.

1. The Origins of the Universe
A Modern Creation Myth

2. A Modern Creation Myth?
• Questions common to human existence
– Who am I?
– Where do I belong?
– What is the totality that I am a part of?
• History as a map of time
– Using history to know where we are, where we
are going, and who we are traveling with

3. A Modern Creation Myth?
• Creation myths offer memorable and
authoritative accounts of how everything
began
– These universal accounts provide coordinates that
people can place themselves on to find their role
in the world
– They speak to our spiritual, psychic, and social
need for a sense of place and belonging in the
world

4. A Modern Creation Myth?
• Discussion Board Topic for Module 2
• “The Epic of Gilgamesh” and Genesis
– Sumerian and Hebrew creation myths
– Read the texts in the links above
• What similarities and differences do you observe?
• What do these creation myths tell you about the
structure of their society and the place of humans in
the world?

5. A Modern Creation Myth?
• The retreat of religion and the rise of
secularism has left our modern world without
any formal creation myth
– But it does not have to be so
• Integrating our accrued knowledge into a unified
narrative
• A creation myth based on knowledge with multiple
“origins”
– Such as the origins of the
Universe, Humanity, Communities, and States

6. A Modern Creation Myth?
• Unify knowledge and
move beyond the limits of
“disciplines”
– Physics
• Stephen Hawking and “grand
unified theory”
– Biology
• Charles Darwin and
evolution
– Geology
• Alfred Wegener and plate
tectonics

7. A Modern Creation Myth?
• Should historians look for similar unifying
structures?
– A “grand unified story”?
• And just what might it look like?
– The origins of the universe?
– The origins of human life?
– The origins of agrarian society?
– The origins of cities?

9. The First 300,000 Years
• How did everything begin?
– The first question for any creation myth
– Answers remain sketchy, despite all our scientific
knowledge
• Can something come out of nothing?
– “Nothing is nothing”
– Potent nothingness?
• Like clay in a potters hands?

10. The First 300,000 Years
• Are we thinking about time and space all wrong?
– Many religions point to a creator
• Dr. Lightfoot’s dating of 9:00 am October 23, 4004 BC
• Still, how does the creator exist?
– Stephen Hawking suggests we think of time not as a
line but as a circle, with no beginning or end
– Skepticism: Human knowledge is limited and some
mysteries must remain
• Many interpret this as God (or Gods) hiding answers from
humans
• Buddhism looks at it as an ultimate riddle
• Science points to a lack of information

11. The First 300,000 Years
• Early Science
– Aristotle and the Earth as the
center of the universe
• Surrounded by transparent
spheres revolving around the
Earth at different speeds
– Copernicus and the
Heliocentric model
• Observations and math illustrate
that the Earth is orbiting the Sun
• Giordano Bruno hypothesizes
that the stars were suns Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543)

12. The First 300,000 Years
• Early Science
– Further research by Galileo and Newton
established basic “laws” which govern the physical
universe
• Strict and rational
– Thermodynamics claims that entropy was
constantly increasing
• Meaning that energy was decreasing
• Problem: If the universe is infinitely old, how is there
any energy left?

13. The First 300,000 Years
• Paradoxes
– Johannes Kepler and
“Olber’s paradox”: If
there are infinite
stars, why is the sky not
infinitely bright?
• Perhaps the universe is not
infinitely large
• New problem: If the
universe is not infinitely
large, gravity suggests that
all matter should be
collapsing to the center of
the universe…

14. The First 300,000 Years
• The Big Bang theory
– Proposed by Georges
Lemaitre
– The universe is finite in
both time and space
– The universe is expanding
too fast for gravity
• The universe has a
beginning
Belgian priest and
astronomer Georges
Lemaitre (1894-1966)

15. The First 300,000 Years
• The universe was created 13 billion years ago
– How long is that? If each person were to live
exactly 70 years it would take 200,000,000
generations to reach equal this number
• What was there before the Big Bang
– We have no idea!
• Time and space as we conceive them were probably
created at the same time as matter and energy in that
first moment

16. The First 300,000 Years
• What happened?
– Much of our account takes place in the first
fractions of a second after the big bang
• The first billionths of seconds may have been as active
and as significant as the billions of years which followed
– The universe was tiny
• Perhaps smaller than an atom*
– The universe was hot
• Trillions of degrees
– Matter and energy are interchangeable at such heats

17. The First 300,000 Years
• The tiny, hot universe expands
at amazing speeds
– Faster than the speed of light
for the first fraction of a
second
• The universe may have went
from as small as an atom to the
size of our galaxy in less than a
second!
• As the universe expands it
becomes less homogeneous
– Symmetry is broken, and
distinct patterns emerge

18. The First 300,000 Years
• After about 300,000 years the
rate of expansion and the
temperature fall enough for
matter to emerge
– First atoms are extremely simple
• Most are hydrogen (2/3)
• Others are helium (1/3)
– The universe is a large, empty
space with immense clouds of
hydrogen and helium
• And massive levels of radiation

19. Origins of the Galaxies and Stars
• We live in the an
undistinguished suburb of
the Milky Way Galaxy
– Which itself is a second-
rank galaxy* on the edge of
the Virgo super-cluster
• Which contains thousands of
galaxies
– In fact, these super-clusters
may be bit players in
cosmological history…
• More than 90% of the
universe is NOT visible

20. Origins of the Galaxies and Stars
• What created these
immense structures?
– Gravity
• The force of the Big Bang
pushed objects apart, gravity
pulls things together
– Pulling on matter and energy
gave the universe shape and
structure
• Shrinking gas clouds gather
mass and heat up
– In the core regions of these
“clumps” atoms began to move
faster and faster, colliding
violently causing nuclear fusion
reactions*

21. Origins of the Galaxies and Stars
• Stars represent a new level of complexity
– New entities operating under new rules
• What had been billions of independent atoms suddenly
became an organized structure that could last for
billions of years
– Gravity collected matter, which in turn caused
heat to increase until a threshold was crossed
• A pattern repeated through history…

22. Origins of the Galaxies and Stars
• Black holes, Quasars, Dark Matter, and the Life
cycles of stars
– Time may be immense in the universe, but it is
very limited for us

23. Origins of the Galaxies and Stars
• Birth of Sol
– Our sun was created 4.6
billion years ago
• It should have a shelf life of 9-
10 billion years, making Sol
middle-aged
– All the planets of our solar-
system were made from the
Sun’s debris and
constructed by its
gravitational field
• In addition, it provides nearly
all the light, heat, and energy
that sustains life on Earth

24. Before Our Next Week
• You should post your response to discussion
board topic for this module
– You should also check prior discussion board
threads
• You should begin reading WTWA