Did You Know: The Big Bang
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Did you know that the big bang was an expansion, not an explosion?
Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and Sonoma State University.
- Artist's conception of the big bang and cosmological expansion by STScI
Written by Margaret W. Carruthers
Designed by Leah Hustak and Dani Player
Editorial and design input from Dr. Brandon Lawton, Dr. Frank Summers, Timothy Rhue II, Claire Blome, and Leah Ramsay.
Music courtesy of Music for Non-Profits
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Title, Did You Know? The Big Bang
Cloud-like shapes swirl. Text, The big bang was an expansion, not an explosion
Before an explosion, matter and space already exist.
But before the big bang, neither matter nor space existed.
Different color shapes in a dark star-filled sky. Text, An explosion involves the sudden motion of matter through space.
After the big bang, however, space itself expanded, moving matter apart.
An explosion has a center from which everything moves outward.
But the big bang had no center.
The formation and expansion of space happened everywhere, all at once.
The big bang was an instantaneous expansion of space and time...
and the beginning of space and time as we know it.