Hubble measured the distances to galaxies. He also studied the motions of galaxies. In doing these things, Hubble noticed a relationship. This is now called Hubbles Law: The farther away a galaxy is, the faster it is moving away from us. There was only one conclusion he could draw from this. The universe is expanding! Figure 26.15 shows a simple diagram of the expanding universe. Imagine a balloon covered with tiny dots. When you blow up the balloon, the rubber stretches. The dots slowly move away from each other as the space between them increases. In an expanding universe, the space between galaxies is expanding. We see this as the other galaxies moving away from us. We also see that galaxies farther away from us move away faster than nearby galaxies. About 13.7 billion years ago, the entire universe was packed together. Everything was squeezed into a tiny volume. Then there was an enormous explosion. After this big bang, the universe expanded rapidly (Figure 26.16). All of the matter and energy in the universe has been expanding ever since. Scientists have evidence this is how the universe formed. One piece of evidence is that we see galaxies moving away from us. If they are moving apart, they must once have been together. Also, there is energy left over from this explosion throughout the universe. The theory for the origin of the universe is called the Big Bang Theory. In the first few moments after the Big Bang, the universe was extremely hot and dense. As the universe expanded, it became less dense. It began to cool. First protons, neutrons, and electrons formed. From these particles came hydrogen. Nuclear fusion created helium atoms. Some parts of the universe had matter that was densely packed. Enormous clumps of matter were held together by gravity. Eventually this material became the gas clouds, stars, galaxies, and other structures that we see in the universe today. We see many objects out in space that emit light. This matter is contained in stars, and the stars are contained in galaxies. Scientists think that stars and galaxies make up only a small part of the matter in the universe. The rest of the matter is called dark matter. Dark matter doesnt emit light, so we cant see it. We know it is there because it affects the motion of objects around it. For example, astronomers measure how spiral galaxies rotate. The outside edges of a galaxy rotate at the same speed as parts closer to the center. This can only be explained if there is a lot more matter in the galaxy than we can see. What is dark matter? Actually, we dont really know. Dark matter could just be ordinary matter, like what makes up Earth. The universe could contain lots of objects that dont have enough mass to glow on their own. There might just be a lot of black holes. Another possibility is that the universe contains a lot of matter that is different from anything we know. If it doesnt interact much with ordinary matter, it would be very difficult or impossible to detect directly. Most scientists who study dark matter think it is a combination. Ordinary matter is part of it. That is mixed with some kind of matter that we havent discovered yet. Most scientists think that ordinary matter is less than half of the total matter in the universe. We know that the universe is expanding. Astronomers have wondered if it is expanding fast enough to escape the pull of gravity. Would the universe just expand forever? If it could not escape the pull of gravity, would it someday start to contract? This means it would eventually get squeezed together in a big crunch. This is the opposite of the Big Bang. Scientists may now have an answer. Recently, astronomers have discovered that the universe is expanding even faster than before. What is causing the expansion to accelerate? One hypothesis is that there is energy out in the universe that we cant see. Astronomers call this dark energy. We know even less about dark energy than we know about dark matter. Some scientists think that dark energy makes up
Output: all the matter and energy that exists and all of space and time