The Big Bang• The story of the universe?

Most people learn about the Big Bang in Science lessons

But it is also a topic in RS

Why?

• In 1929, astronomer Edwin Hubble made his greatest discovery

• It was that the light coming from other galaxies was redder than expected

• He took this to mean that the galaxies were all moving away from us

He observed this because of something called the ‘Red

Shift’

It’s about wave length

Something moving away very fast looks red while something moving towards us looks more blue

It’s the same sort of thing as the Doppler effect with sound waves

• Which means that a sound coming towards us is different from a sound going away from us.

This leads to a belief that

• The whole universe is expanding at a rapid rate

• Most astronomers believe that this expansion started with a Big Bang about 14 billion years ago.

• In fact the words ‘big’ and ‘bang’ don’t even begin to express the enormity

• At that time, the entire Universe was inside a bubble that was thousands of times smaller than a pinhead.

• It was hotter and denser than anything we can imagine.

• Then it suddenly exploded.

• The Universe that we know was born.

• Time, space and matter all began with the Big Bang.

• In a fraction of a second, the Universe grew from smaller than a single atom to bigger than a galaxy.

• And it kept on growing at a fantastic rate.

• It is still expanding today.

Many people say that the Big bang proves that there is no

God• But does the theory actually say

anything about God at all?• No one knows where the matter in

the explosion came from• Or what caused it to explode• Neither does The Big Bang theory

explain how life started

Many believers in God would say

• that the Big Bang was the way in which God chose to create the universe

Do you agree with the Big Bang Idea? Why? Why Not?