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The physical universe is defined as all of space and time [a] (collectively referred to as spacetime) and their contents. [10] Such contents comprise all of energy in its various forms, including electromagnetic radiation and matter, and therefore planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space.
One of the common misconceptions about the Big Bang model is that it fully explains the origin of the universe. However, the Big Bang model does not describe how energy, time, and space were caused, but rather it describes the emergence of the present universe from an ultra-dense and high-temperature initial state. [144]
Research is ongoing to understand this dark energy. Dark energy is now believed to be the single largest component of the universe, as it constitutes about 68.3% of the entire mass–energy of the physical universe. Dark energy is believed to act like a cosmological constant—a scalar field that exists throughout space. Unlike gravity, the ...
Most of the radiation energy in the universe is in the cosmic microwave background, [58] making up a fraction of roughly 6 × 10 −5 of the total density of the universe. [ 59 ] Two of the greatest successes of the Big Bang theory are its prediction of the almost perfect black body spectrum and its detailed prediction of the anisotropies in ...
Factors that need to be considered in determining the universe's origin and ultimate fate include the average motions of galaxies, the shape and structure of the universe, and the amount of dark matter and dark energy that the universe contains.
The traditional model of the Big Bang. The use of only general relativity to predict what happened in the beginnings of the universe has been heavily criticized, as quantum mechanics becomes a significant factor in the high-energy environment of the earliest stage of the universe, and general relativity on its own fails to make accurate predictions.
In 1802 lectures to the Royal Society, Thomas Young was the first to use the term energy to refer to kinetic energy in its modern sense, instead of vis viva. [3] In the 1807 publication of those lectures, he wrote, The product of the mass of a body into the square of its velocity may properly be termed its energy. [4]
When inflation ends, the temperature returns to the pre-inflationary temperature; this is called reheating or thermalization because the large potential energy of the inflaton field decays into particles and fills the Universe with Standard Model particles, including electromagnetic radiation, starting the radiation dominated phase of the Universe.