4. Then, in the 20th century, Einstein advanced his theory of general relativity, the implication of which was that the universe was not static- it must be expanding or contracting.
a. An understanding of the red shift pretty much established an expanding universe. With this came the realization that there must have been a beginning.
5. And that was ‘The Big Bang’…some 13,700 million years ago. Quite an event…it lasted just 10 to the minus 35th seconds, beginning the universe, generating time and space, as well as all the matter and energy that the universe would ever, ever, contain!
6. The basic forces of nature emerged- first gravity, then the strong force that holds the nuclei of atoms together (no atoms existed at this time), followed by weaker, then ‘electromagnetic’ forces. By the end of the firs second, there were quarks and electrons, nutrinos, some other stuff….and, later, some of them smashed together to form protons and neutrons.
7. So, there we have the idea of the universe suddenly appearing at a beginning, and all of that from a huge amount of energy. Of course, that doesnÂ’t begin to ask the obvious: what existed before the Big Bang, and where did all that energy come from?