2 Thomas 1991. For a scathing critique of Thomas's column, see Gardner 1991.
3 On the Big Bang and cosmology, see Singh 2004; Tyson and Goldsmith 2004 (companion volume to the NOVA series "Origins"); Greene 2004; Seife 2003c; Silk 2001; Parsons 2001; Croswell 2001; Gibbons and Shellard 2002; Kragh 1996; Cosmology: A Research Briefing; Cosmology: The Study of the Universe; and Mike Guidry's The Big Bang. The Big Bang theory triumphed in the late 1960s over the rival steady state theory (according to which matter is continuously created, the universe thus remaining in a steady state despite its expansion) (Kragh 1996; Lightman 1991, 52-55). The inflationary Big Bang is today's standard cosmological model (Bridle et al. 2003; on inflation, see lines 351-363 and note 35 below). On the ekpyrotic universe model, see note 32 below.
4 "In the beginning there was an explosion" (Weinberg 1993, 5).
5 Hawking 1988, 39; Parker 1988, 38.
6 Popular treatments of relativity include Robinson 2005, Kaku 2004, Wolfson 2002, Parker 2000, Calder 1979, and Einstein 1952. See also Weiss 2002 and special Einstein issue of Discover (Sept. 2004). The evidence that the universe is flat (see note 30 below) does not contravene relativity, which allows for but does not require curved space.
7 Overbye 1991, 55.
8 Einstein 1952, 133-134.
9 Weinberg 1977, 5.
10 Hawking 1988, 8, 46-49, 133.
11 Gore 1983, 710.
12 Lightman and Brawer 1990, 52; Overbye 1991, 39.
13 K stands for the Kelvin temperature scale.
14 On inflation, see note 35 below. On the quark-gluon plasma, the primordial soup of quarks and gluons thought to have existed in the first microseconds after the Big Bang before coalescing into more familiar particles, see Seife 2004f, 2003b, and 2000a.
On the cosmic "Dark Age," the time of universal darkness after the first burst of light created by formation of hydrogen atoms, 400,000 years after the Big Bang, till the birth of the first stars 400 million years after the explosion (Cowen 2006c), see Miralda-Escude 2003.
15 See "The Biologist's Tale."
16 Gould 1995, 409; Ferris 1997, 194-195.
17 Alpher and Herman 1948.
18 Penzias and Wilson 1965; Wilson 1979. The cosmic background radiation is more commonly called the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Needless to say, "cosmic background radiation" works best in metrical verse.
19 Lightman 1991, 43-45.
20 See "The Astronomer's Tale," lines 55-68.
21 See Lightman and Brawer 1990, 25-28; Silk 1989, 57-60.
22 de Lapparent, Geller, and Huchra 1986; Geller and Huchra 1989; Geller 1990. See Taubes 1997 on Geller and large-scale structure.
23 Geller 1990, 366; Flam 1991a, 1107. On the age of the universe, see "The Astronomer's Tale," note 6.
24 A brown dwarf is, in Alexander Hellemans' words, "a poor excuse for a star." Recent research shows that a brown dwarf forms as does a star, out of a contracting cloud of gas and dust, but the resulting body, while hot enough for low luminosity through infrared radiation, is too small for gravity to ignite nuclear fusion as in stellar cores (Jayawardhana 2004; Lodders 2004; Irion 2002a; Reid 2002; Sincell 2001b; Hellemans 1998; see also Gizis 2001; Tinney 1999. Brown dwarfs are now generally considered not numerous enough to contribute significantly to the universe's dark matter (Gizis 2001). Brown dwarfs and black holes are among the objects known collectively as MACHOs (massive compact halo objects).
25 Two independent galaxy studies have shown that on scales of millions of light-years, the distribution of the galaxies coincides with that of dark matter, which astronomers believe holds galaxies and galaxy clusters together through gravitation (Cowen 2002a). (On the percentage amount of dark and ordinary matter and "dark energy" in the universe, see note 30 below; on dark energy, see note 31 below). For more on dark matter, see Sadoulet 2007; Shiga 2005; Zioutas et al. 2004; Ostriker and Steinhardt 2003; Cowen 2001g; Krauss 2000.
On the evidence that neutrinos have mass, see Weiss 1999; Normile 1998; Kestenbaum 1998b.
26 See Flam 1991a; Flamsteed 1991; Lightman 1991, 80-83; Peterson 1991a; 1991b, 233. A headline in the New York Times read "Astronomers' New Data Jolt Vital Part of Big Bang Theory"; Time magazine declared, "Bang! A Big Theory May Be Shot" (Flamsteed 1991, 22). Creationist leader Duane Gish, writing in the ICR's Impact series, announced "The Big Bang Theory Collapses" (Gish 1991).
27 See lines 283-300. The cold dark matter theory got a further boost with the findings of a study of galaxies reported in 2002 (see UCSD Press Release), and with the WMAP data announced in February 2003 (see note 30 below). See also Springel et al. 2005. However, galaxies dating back to the early universe have been found that are surprisingly massive for their young age; if these early giants prove to be common, the cold dark matter theory of galaxy formation will again be in peril (Cowen 2005b).
28 See Ferris 1997, 166-167, 233-234; Mather and Boslough 1996; Smoot and Davidson 1993; Flam 1992a; Partridge 1992; Powell 1992. On COBE team leader George Smoot's comment, see Flam 1992b, 29; Lemonick 1992, 62; see also Begley and Glick 1992. On later, more detailed measurements of the cosmic background radiation, see note 30 below. On galaxy formation, see Freeman 2003.
29 With a flat universe, the expansion continues, in the words of Silk (1989, 123), "forever, but only just," or as Overbye (1991, 56) puts it, "forever but not a day longer." Robert R. Caldwell and colleagues have proposed that if the density of the universe's "dark energy" (see note 31) (which they refer to as "phantom energy") grows with the expansion instead of remaining constant or declining, then the following occurs about 35 billion years after the big bang: "The phantom energy rips apart the Milky Way, solar system, Earth, and ultimately the molecules, atoms, nuclei, and nucleons of which we are composed, before the death of the Universe in a 'Big Rip'" (Caldwell et al. 2003; Cowen 2003c).
30 The evidence that the universe is flat supports the favored inflationary model of Big Bang theory (Gangui 2001; see notes 34 and 38 below), though it does not rule out alternatives such as a cyclic universe (Bridle et al. 2003; see note 32 below). The probe referred to is NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which produced the first detailed full-sky map of the cosmic background radiation, the data from which indicates that the universe contains 4% atoms (ordinary matter), 22% cold dark matter, and 74% dark energy (NASA 2/11/03, updated 3/17/06; ScienceDaily; Cowen 2003b)--what has been called "a truly preposterous universe" (Gangui 2003; on dark energy, see note 31 below). The WMAP data also indicates, in addition to cosmic flatness, an age of the universe of 13.7 billion years (see "The Astronomer's Tale," note 6). NASA's Anne Kinney has called the WMAP findings "a true turning point in cosmology" (ScienceDaily).
31 The evidence for "dark energy," an antigravity force causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate, includes the systematic dimming of light from distant supernovae (Kirshner 2002; Sincell 2001a); the correlation of WMAP data with the positions of galaxies mapped by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS); the similar correlation of WMAP data with galaxies mapped at X-ray and radio wavelengths (see Cowen 2003d); and the largest galaxy survey ever (mapping more than 46,000 luminous red galaxies over a volume of space roughly 5 billion light-years in diameter), conducted by the SDSS, confirming the role of gravity in the formation of large-scale structure (Eisenstein et al. 2005). In May 2004 astronomers announced that a study of 26 galaxy clusters using NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory has traced the transition of the expanding universe from a decelerating to an accelerating phase six billion years ago, and suggests that the dark energy density may be constant and that the universe will therefore expand forever (Cho 2004a; ScienceDaily). It has been proposed that dark energy, still a great mystery, is to be identified with vacuum energy (the energy that according to quantum mechanics is present in the vacuum or "empty" space [see lines 380-391] and reportedly has negative pressure), or a repulsive force called "quintessence." (Rather than having no idea of what dark energy is, says astrophysicist Charles L. Bennett [2005], perhaps it is more correct to say that we have too many ideas of what dark energy is, and they may all be wrong.) For more on dark energy, see Cowen 2008a; Cho 2005b; Guth and Kaiser 2005; Kirshner 2003; and Seife 2003d. On Einstein's cosmological constant, see lines 50-74.
32 In 2001, physicist Paul Steinhardt and three other cosmologists announced a new rival theory to the Big Bang, called the ekpyrotic universe. Based on M-theory (an extension of string theory), it proposes that two flat, three-dimensional membranes, or branes for short, floating in five-dimensional space (six other dimensions being folded up), collided, producing the energy and matter that comprise our present cosmos. The ekpyrotic model replaces the exploding singularity and inflation of the Big-Bang model with expansion resulting from a "big bump" (Gorkin 2001) or "big splat" (Seife 2002a). (See Cowen 2001f; Khoury et al. 2001a and 2001b; Seife 2001a.) Once the expanding universe is so spread out that space is essentially empty, a new cosmic cycle begins as the branes are drawn back together, resulting in another collision. Thus the ekpyrotic model is that of a cylic universe, an endless sequence of cosmic expansions (Steinhardt and Turok 2006 and 2002; Lemonick 2004; Steinhardt 2001; see also Seife 2002a).
33 Guth 1997b, 15, 255; 1988a, 31; Overbye 1991, 248-249, 364; Kaku 1996, 38.
34 Actually creationists misinterpret creation in Genesis as creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo). God is described as forming the world out of preexistent chaos. The only biblical reference to creation out of nothing is in the apocryphal 2 Maccabees 7:28 (Hiers 1989).
35 Guth 1997b and 1988b; Ferris 1997, 258-263; Kaku 1996. Though Guth has described as bubbles the countless universes theoretically produced by inflation's "false vacuum," in his book The Inflationary Universe he describes these universes as scattered "pockets" in space and time, and asserts that, if inflationary theory is correct, such pocket universes--our observed universe being but a fraction of one--will go on being created (each with a Big Bang) forever (1997b, 245-248). It's Andrei Linde, the Russian physicist who has refined Guth's "old" inflationary theory into what is called "chaotic inflation," who really gets bubbly about the cosmos. Each inflationary universe, says Linde, is self-reproducing, sprouting "other inflationary bubbles, which in turn produce other inflationary bubbles," etc. (quoted in Ferris 1997, 260). For discussion of the various inflationary models since Guth first wrote "spectacular realization" on a notepad in December 1979, see Guth and Kaiser 2005; Glanz 1999c; Guth 1997b; Ferris 1997; Lightman 1991, 109-115; Lightman and Brawer 1990, 42-46; Overbye 1991, 247-260; Silk 1989, 119-124. See also Tegmark 2003, Rees 1997, 1999, 2001, Lemley 2000, and "The Philosopher's Tale," note 41, on the "multiverse," or "our universe and others."
36 Ferris 1988, 361-362. Creating a universe in your basement would not be as easy as it sounds. It would require heating up matter 1,000 trillion trillion degrees (Kaku 1996, 38). And even assuming you could throw together the "patch of false vacuum" that you need to get a false-vacuum bubble going (according to inflationary theory, at least), there seems to be no practical way to attain the expansion velocity needed to turn your bubble into a universe (Guth 1997b, 253-269).
37 Tryon 1973; 1989, 155; see also Bartusiak 1987; Ferris 1988, 352-362; Guth 1990, 477-478; Parker 1988, 186-195; Trefil 1989, 212. In 1969 Tryon, his mind wandering during a talk by cosmologist Dennis Sciama, suddenly blurted out, "Maybe the universe is a vacuum fluctuation." Everyone laughed at the "joke" (Ferris 1988, 353-354; Parker 1988, 189).
38 Tryon 1973. On the quantum world, see Rosenblum and Kuttner 2006; Ford 2004; Hey and Walters 2003; Treiman 1999; and 2/11/05 issue of Science. Online see Stephen Jenkins on quantum mechanics. "Of course our universe could not emerge from absolutely nothing," writes Martin Gardner (1998). "There would have to be quantum fields to fluctuate, leaving unanswered the ultimate question of where quantum fields and their laws came from, or why there is something rather than nothing."
39 Guth 1997b; Guth and Steinhardt 1984.