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The expansion of the universe can be understood as resulting from an initial condition in which the contents of the universe are flying apart. The mutual gravitational attraction of the matter and radiation within the universe gradually slows this expansion over time, but their density is too low to prevent continued expansion. [20]
The earliest and most direct observational evidence of the validity of the theory are the expansion of the universe according to Hubble's law (as indicated by the redshifts of galaxies), discovery and measurement of the cosmic microwave background and the relative abundances of light elements produced by Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN).
The accelerated expansion of the universe is thought to have begun since the universe entered its dark-energy-dominated era roughly 5 billion years ago. [ 8 ] [ notes 1 ] Within the framework of general relativity , an accelerated expansion can be accounted for by a positive value of the cosmological constant Λ , equivalent to the presence of ...
The thinning of matter over time reduces the ability of the matter to gravitationally decelerate the expansion of the universe; in contrast, dark energy is a constant factor tending to accelerate the expansion of the universe. The universe's expansion passed an inflection point about five or six billion years ago when the universe entered the ...
The "Big Bang" scenario, with cosmic inflation and standard particle physics, is the only cosmological model consistent with the observed continuing expansion of space, the observed distribution of lighter elements in the universe (hydrogen, helium, and lithium), and the spatial texture of minute irregularities (anisotropies) in the CMB radiation.
For example, w = 0 describes a matter-dominated universe, where the pressure is negligible with respect to the mass density. From the generic solution one easily sees that in a matter-dominated universe the scale factor goes as a ( t ) ∝ t 2 / 3 matter-dominated {\displaystyle a(t)\propto t^{2/3}\qquad {\text{matter-dominated}}}
The solution is an expanding universe; due to this expansion, the radiation and matter in the universe cool and become diluted. At first, the expansion is slowed down by gravitation attracting the radiation and matter in the universe. However, as these become diluted, the cosmological constant becomes more dominant and the expansion of the ...
Inflation postulates that some repulsive force, qualitatively similar to dark energy, resulted in an enormous and exponential expansion of the universe during its earliest stages. Such expansion is an essential feature of most current models of the Big Bang. However, inflation must have occurred at a much higher energy density than the dark ...