Compared with the history of a specific country, civilization and time and space, it is undoubtedly more difficult and attractive to explore "the whole past history".

Any clever young man is always eager to know the unified and complete "past". They expect to understand the infinite world with limited knowledge and intelligence, cross the abyss of lack of knowledge, and thoroughly understand this "whole world!" "

It is precisely because of this desire that they spend some time in life reading, exploring, thinking and pursuing the lamp of wisdom in order to illuminate the truth in the abyss.

The reason why it is "more difficult" is because the span of "time" is particularly long. According to the theory of modern cosmology, "Hubble volume" has existed for at least 654.38+03.8 billion years. It is impossible to investigate such a profound and long history based on empirical evidence, but only a theoretical model based on logical reasoning, which is inevitably filled with some unconfirmed theoretical speculations. ...

Secondly, because "space" is vast, even if it rushes out of the earth, solar system, milky way and extragalactic galaxy at the speed of light, it will take 93 billion years just from the space diameter of "Hubble volume" ... How to grasp the events that happened in such a vast world? Similarly, relying on the reasoning of scientific theoretical model and a small amount of evidence to describe "what happened"

At this moment, space is still expanding, even at superluminal speed. In the near future, the distance between stars and galaxies will be very far away. )

It is precisely because the "time and space" that needs to be described is extremely far-reaching, it is extremely difficult to try to tell "macro history" completely, which is different from "world history":

This narrative needs more comprehensive knowledge ... that is, the common sense of cosmology, geology and biology is skillfully integrated with the history of human civilization to tell such a great story? A modern creative story.

2

Since ancient times, every human being with a little brain has been eager to know such a great story in his heart and the source of the mystery of the world and life.

Early humans understood the external world through religion, myths and legends, and clumsy philosophical systems, and "explained" mysterious natural phenomena through their own simple "knowledge", allowing foolish guesses and nonsense to construct a cognition of the whole world.

Today, a "modern" human being will be no different from primitive people thousands or tens of thousands of years ago if he still accepts such a world outlook, takes ignorant religious stories as cognitive approaches, and understands the mysteries of everything with stupid philosophical systems and myths and legends.

We have a better cognitive system to explain the puzzles of the whole world.

(Early humans believed in religious dogmatism, firstly because there was no better cognitive system, and secondly because there was no place to put their minds, and they longed for an explanation of "the whole world and life".

Too complicated explanation is beyond their patience and intelligence, and most religions are just a convenient explanation, which perfectly fits the anoxic brain, so they have gained extensive beliefs and successful pyramid schemes.

It is undeniable that religion, as a cognitive system, in a sense, can soothe people's souls and their lonely and ignorant lives far more than cold science ... It provides a virtual promise and guarantee and does not scare people with cruel reality.

Lies, occasionally, do comfort those fragile hearts more than the truth. )

Now, let's listen to a new version, a great story told by modern science.

three

Before retelling the theory of modern science about the origin of the world, there are three questions that are not worth mentioning:

1? Why does our curiosity try to understand the world?

Why are we eager to know the origin of the world?

Why ask: "Who are we and where are we going?"

Our minds are full of confusion and confusion, and only "answers" can smooth this confusion.

The problem 1 is because it is a characteristic of intelligence. One of the functions of intelligence is to analyze, observe, explain and understand the external situation, so as to get more information and react at any time and increase the chances of survival. The deduction of intelligence was originally for survival and reproduction, not for understanding stars, quarks and life.

The second problem is because of a psychological "lost", we need a coordinate, a positioning, a sense of belonging ... and this "positioning" is based on a clear understanding of the outside world. Therefore, we need to explain not only the origin of this world, but also the origin of life and human beings ... Only through a certain degree of cognition can we get rid of our inner confusion, fear and anxiety and satisfy our strong curiosity.

The birth of life, how the world was formed ... This knowledge helps us to understand our situation and the possibility of the future.

The third question is because only by knowing our own situation: the relationship with the world, what kind of abilities we have, and what kind of species we belong to, can we deeply understand what kind of "meaning" life can have, what kind of "meaning" we can create, clearly locate our "position" in this vast cosmic space, and understand how to continue this existence and why to survive.

This is the desire rooted in everyone's heart and the reason why our species is unique.

In the macro history, the time of human existence is so short that it can only be described as "insignificant" from the perspective of time ... but on this issue, time is not the only important yardstick, and it is not enough to measure the precious value of this species. Among hundreds of millions of stars, I can't assert that this species has any extraordinary "significance", but I am always content to be in it ... my personality is no longer against myself, nor is it.

four

A huge and colorful planet

Rotate slowly in the gravitational field

Planets and planets

Galaxies are far away from each other.

In the vast ocean of the universe

Stars like this, the Milky Way,

As many grains of sand as the Atlantic Ocean.

If you

Also flying and shuttling among planets, galaxies and meteorites,

It will definitely be like me.

Surprise, confusion:

What kind of power is it?

Created this elegant and weird world?

Why?

Will operate in this form.

... the whole universe

Is a huge mystery.

Endless space and infinite time.

Imprisoning the human soul

Eternal mystery

Drowning one stupid idea after another,

With eternal silence

Respond to one urgent heart after another …

five

Telling a "macro-historical" story involves many viewpoints that are difficult to distinguish between true and false. Based on the shallowness of knowledge, you can't understand the reliability of those opinions. Therefore, you can only repeat the theories of physicists, geologists, biologists and anthropologists and fill in some exclamations ... [picking your nose]

Different disciplines have established huge models, describing the state of the "whole world" in different historical periods with unique knowledge, theories and experimental data, and talking about how they originated, how they evolved and what state they are in at present.

First, the story is divided into five stages:

1. Evolution and origin of the universe, galaxies and stars

(The right of interpretation at this stage only belongs to physics)

Two: the origin of the earth

Third, the origin of life.

Fourth, the origin of mankind.

Verb (abbreviation of verb) the origin of human civilization

six

If we don't talk about the origin of the universe, the so-called "macro history" can't be discussed, and this field happens to be the most difficult part of all problems.

Even using modern scientific theories and evidence to answer is full of huge problems (the evidence that scholars can trust is limited, and the boundaries and possibilities are endless).

It was not until the first half of the 20th century that the viewpoint of "origin" was formed through some facts and evidence that it was clearly realized that even the universe was not an eternal existence, and it itself had its origin in "time".

However, even more incredible than the existence of an origin in the whole universe is that space and time, like matter and energy, are "created" at a specific moment.

Understanding this "fact" should be the biggest challenge that human beings have ever encountered in intelligence, intuition and experience.

("Time" has an origin, which seems to have ended such a question: "What was the state before BIGBANG?"

This extremely professional problem involves too many unfathomable physics, which needs more in-depth research to understand why physicists come to such a conclusion.

note:

6. 1

1927, George Lemaistre (artillery officer, priest and cosmologist) who participated in World War I independently published the strict solution of Einstein's field equation (called "Friedman-Lemaistre-Robertson-Volcker metric").

This solution led to an early model of the universe: the modern universe may be expanding.

In this case, time reversal reasoning, back to the past history, draws a fresh conclusion: in the "initial initial", the universe may have originated at a specific moment, from an "atom of an atom".

(Of course, Lemaistre's view is different from modern cosmology: its "primitive atom" is 30 times larger than the sun and contains all the matter in the universe. )

(At the same time, the Russian mathematician Friedman came to a similar conclusion. )

6.2

The current "Big Bang" theory can be regarded as a successful model, with a lot of conclusive evidence and some evidence to support it (Hubble red shift, microwave background radiation, abundance ratio of light elements, calculation of cosmic age).

Is the Big Bang Cosmology Correct? It is still difficult to distinguish this point, and there are still a lot of problems that cannot be solved.

Now we can use the theories and experiments of particle physics, plasma physics and quantum physics to study the situation in a short time after the big bang.

For example, what happens at a very small scale at high temperature.

When this knowledge is applied to the "Big Bang Model", at least four problems will be found:

1? Magnetic monopole

2? Homogeneity problem

3? Isotropy of microwave background (horizon problem)

4? Smoothness problem

..... Some observational contradictions are inconsistent with the theory. The solution is to put forward some more "subversive" views (such as Allen Gus's "inflation theory")

seven

Time is a frozen river.

Never flowed.

Life itself is fluid.

Like an arrow leaving the string

Through pieces of frozen time fragments.

The so-called "past, present and future"

This is not clear. -Very clear.

Clocks are hung in the mysterious universe.

Each space corresponds to a timeline.

eight

There are many theories about the origin of the universe, most of which are abandoned in the corner of history because they do not conform to the experimental evidence. However, the "Big Bang Theory" is not entirely based on observation. In fact, it is derived from the solution of the field equation of general relativity, which is most consistent with the observed results, so it stands out. Hubble redshift, microwave background radiation and the relative abundance of light elements ... provide strong support for this theory from different directions.

But it's still so strange. It "dares" to claim that the substances that make up the whole universe, hundreds of billions of galaxies and trillions of suns all originated from the "singularity event" of 65.438+0.38 billion years. The planets, galaxies and universes where human beings live actually have their original origins.

At the beginning of its birth, all the matter in the whole universe was compressed and squeezed together, not only smaller than an atom, but also in an incredible state of extremely hot and dense.

What is even more bizarre is that energy and matter come out of nothingness (quantum vacuum fluctuation), followed by time and space.

8. 1

Why do positive and negative matter disappear from each other in the void? Why do every 10 billion quarks collide, leaving a quark to form our world today? Why is the temperature in the early universe so high? And so dense? Why is it expanding at superluminal speed? Why do different entities appear in the universe after getting rid of strong instability: protons, neutrons, photons, electrons ...? Why do different forces form: strong force, weak force, gravity and electromagnetic force?

All these questions remain to be answered.

In short, modern cosmology tells an incomprehensible story of origin, including "time and space, particles, physical fields and fundamental forces", and everything has a beginning.

nine

So how did the first one start?

The initial stage of "Singularity Big Bang" is called "Planck Period". During this period (i.e. 10-43 seconds), the universe has not yet developed and formed.

(Note: the so-called "Planck length" means that the universe is smaller than the smallest length unit in the physical sense)

Everything that happened before Planck time can't be explained.

(At this time, gravity has appeared)

Stage 2: 10-35 (seconds)

Strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force and electromagnetic force also began to appear.

It is worth noting that:

In the Planck period, they did not exist independently, but unified into a primitive power ("superpower") ... At this time, the universe was in a highly symmetrical period and state, and the whole world had only energy and superpowers, but no matter. ..... With the rapid expansion and cooling after the symmetry breaking stage, at the end of Planck, gravity was separated.

The third stage: 10-33? ∽? 10^-32

(seconds)

The universe experienced an extremely violent expansion, Allen? Gus called it the "expansion" stage ... In this interesting period, the whole universe expanded by 65.438+00 billion times in scale and size (that is, from something smaller than an atom to today's vast and almost infinite universe) ... The whole inflation moment was not long, and it ended after about 654.38+00.4 seconds (that is, it reached 654.38+00.4 seconds).

10

By the way, this expansion has not stopped. At this moment, distant galaxies are moving away from us, and the farther away galaxies are, the faster they are ... In the near future, hundreds of millions of years later, if humans still live in this world and live in this cosmic space, our descendants will find that there are so few stars and galaxies available for observation above the sky. If the expansion speed is fast enough, there may be no one in the night sky in the future.

If today's astronomical knowledge and data are not properly preserved, future generations will think that there are no other galaxies in space.

10. 1

Modern physics is obviously like a kind of witchcraft. When the subject of physics research has been advanced to the origin of the universe within three minutes, cosmologists may also be confused and want to know whether it is science or magic.

Through the accumulation of experience and knowledge, the road of human wisdom may have crossed the boundary of "stupidity" and gone deep and far. ...

1 1

The fourth stage: 10- 10? ..... 10-6 (seconds)

At this point, the fundamental forces have been separated, the temperature of the universe has begun to rise, quarks and antiquarks create and annihilate each other, while quarks that continue to exist are limited to protons and neutrons.

By the way, the electromagnetic force is separated from the weak nuclear force, which is called "the third symmetry breaking event" (which occurs at 10 1 1 sec).

At this time, all quarks, electrons and all offspring particles have gained mass.

There is a theory that some mysterious particles give them mass. This theory was put forward by the lucky physicist Higgs, and his "Higgs mechanism" provided an explanation for the mystery of particle mass.

More than 40 years later, the "God particle" claimed by Higgs, who had no hope before his death, was fortunately captured by the laboratory, which confirmed the prediction of this theory. )

The fifth stage: 1- 10 seconds.

Electrons and electrons pair with each other and disappear (the rest is only one billionth of the original total number of electrons and electrons, and quarks are also this data)

Stage 6: the first three minutes

Protons and neutrons combine to form nuclei of hydrogen and helium.

Stage 7: Three minutes? About 300 thousand years

Electronically charged atoms begin to be captured by positively charged neutrons.

The universe becomes neutral in electricity price, and radioactivity and matter are separated from each other. In the huge "flicker" that we can detect at present, radiation and microscopic background radiation are released.

The above is the story that happened 300,000 years after the birth of the universe within one second.

1 1

There is one factor worth emphasizing: "temperature"

Temperature has played an extremely important role in the macroscopic history of the evolution of the universe. With the continuous cooling of the cosmic environment, quarks can form protons and neutrons under the action of strong nuclear forces until one millionth of a second.

(In other words, at this moment, the first element has been born)

As the temperature continues to drop, after a long time of 3 minutes, the cosmic environment has cooled to allow a vague relationship between protons and neutrons (helium has been synthesized).

After that, there was a little lithium, and I limped. ...

At this point, the core actors in the universe have all been put in place (gravity, electromagnetic force, strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force), and the fascinating drama is about to begin, thus opening the curtain of macro history. ...

Note: (About temperature)

The concept of macro field is not necessarily applicable to micro field. Strictly speaking, the so-called "temperature" is essentially the expression of molecular motion energy, and each molecule itself does not have temperature characteristics. Temperature is an exhibition effect that we produce from the micro-world level. Looking at each molecule alone, there is no difference between ice and water, and the characteristics are different because of the different aggregation methods.

13

Scientific theory is never equal to an indisputable fact. Therefore, to listen to a macro historical story, we must be rational: the content of the story consists of a large number of theories and a small amount of evidence.

Evidence is more like a supporting role than logical speculation and hypothesis. Even when describing the evolution of the whole universe scientifically, there are inevitably a lot of unknown errors, which can only be regarded as some kind of "facts" until they are corrected by experiments. Otherwise, you will never tell how the story started. )

Especially those theories that describe the birth of the universe and the origin of matter, many hypotheses have not been verified, and many parameters are artificially introduced.

For example, in order to explain the contradiction between the big bang theory and the observed evidence, many different types of inflation models have been introduced ... Are they reliable? The core theory has not been verified so far and is almost unknown.

We are trapped in a void, relying on evidence and speculation to find out what is the truth.