• Question: How did the world begin?

    Asked by anon-193169 to Morwenna, Jamal, iainstaniland, Heidi, Emma, Carl on 5 Nov 2018. This question was also asked by anon-193163, anon-193170, anon-193474.
    • Photo: Iain Staniland

      Iain Staniland answered on 5 Nov 2018:


      Nothing like a nice and simple question! I love this kind of question though as I have thought about it myself a lot it is such a fascinating subject. Given I am not a Physicist I can only go on the stuff I have read. So at the moment it seems that the big bang theory is the best explanation we have. It also happens to be my favorite TV show!

    • Photo: Jamal Kinsella

      Jamal Kinsella answered on 5 Nov 2018:


      Great question!

      What happened was: before our world existed as we know it, we had the Big Bang. Then, gas and dust was attracted to itself, which formed a clump in space which became our Sun. The sun attracted more gas and dust which swirled around it, slowly clumping together into the planets. Our planet Earth was the third clump out from the sun.

      However, if by the world, you mean the universe as a whole, we need to go further back in time when the entire universe, including everything that has ever existed, was squished into a tiny point too small to see. Understandably, this was a tight fit! So, this tiny point expanded, very quickly, and continues to expand to this day. This is of course the Big Bang Theory!

    • Photo: Emma Crawford

      Emma Crawford answered on 5 Nov 2018:


      Ah that age-old question… Now I am christened, used to attend church and did go to a Church of England school when I was younger so I was bought up learning about the 7 days of creation. I don’t go to church now but sometimes I like to still believe in a power that be that is beyond what we can explain… (cue the court-room scene from Miracle on 34th Street with the $1 bill to prove Santa Claus exists… “In God We Trust”).
      But I am also into my science, playing with dinosaurs since I was little and now a fan of the Big Bang Theory series like Iain. I love David Attenborough and the series he did about the Giant Dinosaur and definitely believe they existed. In terms of how the dinosaurs and everything before them came to be, that is one question that I still ponder over… what came first the dinosaur or the egg?

    • Photo: Carl Heron

      Carl Heron answered on 6 Nov 2018:


      I defer to Brian Cox (physicist and TV star on this one). Here is a link to a little video on the BBC pages where Brian looks at evidence of the Big Bang Theory:
      https://www.bbc.com/teach/class-clips-video/physics-ks3–gcse-evidence-of-the-big-bang/z6tn382

    • Photo: Heidi Gardner

      Heidi Gardner answered on 7 Nov 2018:


      There are lots of different theories about how the world began, but I believe in the ‘big bang’, Iain, Jamal, Emma and Carl all mention this in there answers too. The Big Bang is a bit of a weird one to get your head around though. It just seems so big and far away that sometimes it just freaks me out and I can’t understand how on Earth it happened. This YouTube video – one of the science in less than 5 minutes series – helped me understand the big bang in more easy terms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3QM7o-egXo

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