A Brief History of the Universe: Crash Course Astronomy #44

Thanks to the wonders of physics, astronomers can map a timeline of the universe’s history. Today, Phil will give you an overview of those first few minutes (yes, MINUTES) of the universe’s life. It started with the Big Bang, when the Universe was incredibly dense and hot. It expanded and cooled, going through multiple stages where different kinds of matter could form. It underwent a phenomenally rapid expansion called inflation, which smoothed out much of the lumpiness in the matter. Normal matter formed atoms between 3 and 20 minutes after the bang, and the lumps left over from inflation formed the galaxies and larger structures we see today.

PBS Digital Studios: http://youtube.com/pbsdigitalstudios

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PHOTOS/VIDEOS
Proton Collision Event with Boosters and LHC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhXMXiXOWAA [credit: ATLAS]
Melting Snowball video courtesy of Phil Plait
Big Bang to Hubble http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/hst15_big_bang_to_hubble/ [credit: ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen)]
Journey to the centre of the Sun http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/astro_ac/ [credit: ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen)]
PIA16873: Best Map Ever of the Universe http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA16873 [credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration]
A high resolution foreground cleaned CMB map from WMAP http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/mapforegs.pdf [credit: Tegmark et al.]
Planck comb rbcol scaled http://www.astro.cardiff.ac.uk/~spxcen/CMB_Sims/Planck_comb_rbcol_scaled.png [credit: Chris North, Cardiff University]
WMAP’s Portrait of the Early Universe http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=10123 [credit: NASA]