user miszabot config archiveheader maxarchivesize k counter algo old d archive talk big bang archive counter d important this is not the place to discuss how you think the universe began this page is for discussing the article which is about the big bang model and about what has been presented in peer reviewed scientific literature about it see wikipedia no original research and wikipedia talk page guidelines if you wish to discuss or debate the validity of the big bang please do so at baut forum or talk origins fantastic work one of my friends passed along a comment from a professor's class notes about this article it is required reading for the class i thought it would be nice to share it here great work i agree this article is really good now image from wmap press release this image is quite puzzling and deserves a wider comment i believe that the grid is physically correct but the image of the cmbr on the left as a surface rather than as a circle and the representation of stars as points rather than geodesics are simply artist concepts and readers should be warned any objection against pointing out the ambiguity of an image from a qualified source do you believe they are really correct image copied here for easier reference i have mixed feelings on the one hand it's one of those pictures that's pretty but doesn't do a great job of illustrating the actual science on the other hand it could do a lot worse i'm still trying to figure out what the scale radius of the circular cross sections is supposed to represent it's not the frw scale factor because then the inflationary epoch and the cmb would be invisible smaller than a pixel then i thought it was the comoving radius of the observable universe but then it shouldn't flare outward on the right or have that point on the left the graph of the comoving radius can only be concave upward if the universe is shrinking maybe it's the scale factor with a significant amount of distortion to make the early eras visible but then the inflation label is pointing to the wrong place it should be pointing basically where quantum fluctuations is pointing or it could be the log of the scale factor but that has the same problems as the comoving radius the illustration of the evolution of the galaxies is kind of cool and could perhaps be justified by saying that they took slices of the universe of nonzero thickness at intervals of say million years and stacked those on top of each other that would explain the lack of continuous world lines are people going to get that i don't know file big bang manifold png right