The Big Bang (Astronomy)

Recall cards on the origin and evolution of the whole universe. The age of the cosmos: the Hubble time, the 13.8-billion-year-old universe, the deceleration that gave way to dark-energy acceleration, and the 1998 Type Ia supernova result honored with the 2011 Nobel Prize. A model of the universe: the homogeneous and isotropic large-scale cosmos, the scale factor, cosmological redshift, critical density, and open, closed, and flat geometries. The beginning: the Big Bang, Lemaitre's primeval atom, Gamow's hot early universe, the temperature-time ladder, and the nucleosynthesis of hydrogen, helium, and lithium in the first four minutes. The cosmic microwave background: Penzias and Wilson, the 2.73-kelvin blackbody, recombination at 380,000 years, and the COBE, WMAP, and Planck missions. What the universe is made of: about 4% ordinary matter, 27% dark matter, and 68% dark energy. And the frontier ideas: inflation and the flatness and horizon problems, the four fundamental forces, grand unified theories, the anthropic principle, cosmic fine-tuning, and the multiverse.