Bang!
(Illustration: Creative Market.)

Bang! Goes the Universe

ByMargaret Crable

Almost 14 billion years ago, the universe gave birth to itself. In the manner of a glassblower shaping a molten orb, a tiny, exceptionally hot speck of dense material ballooned outward into vastness.

The event — known as the Big Bang — was an astounding burst of transformation. In less than a second, the universe likely doubled in size many times over. As it then began to cool, subatomic particles formed, followed minutes later by the lightest elements such as helium, hydrogen and lithium.

Remarkably, within just three minutes, the universe completed the first stage of its development. But it would take at least 100 million years — after the first stars ignited — for heavier elements to begin forming.

“It’s hard to truly grasp how quickly the universe expanded and cooled during those first moments,” says Kris Pardo, assistant professor of physics and astronomy. “Three minutes feels normal to us — but on that scale, it’s almost impossible to comprehend.”

Known Unknowns

Of course, the Big Bang remains a theory — “our current best guess” as to how the universe was formed, says Pardo. Key elements, such as “inflation” (a rapid expansion of the universe’s size), still need confirmation.

“We think inflation likely occurred,” he says, “mainly because it helps explain why our universe is geometrically flat, along with a few other cosmological puzzles. However, we haven’t yet found direct evidence.”

A key may lie in the cosmic microwave background, or CMB — a faint, lingering radiation that stretches to the edges of the universe. Dating back to just after the Big Bang, it serves as an invaluable cosmic clue.

Vera Gluscevic, associate professor of physics and astronomy, focuses much of her research on testing theories related to CMB. In April, she and Adam He, a doctoral student in physics, completed an analysis of data collected by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, located in Chile’s remote Atacama Desert. The images captured our clearest view yet of CMB — a snapshot of the universe when it was just 380,000 years old. Gluscevic and He were part of a team of 65 researchers from around the world who collaborated on this project.

“In the end, myths are a search for meaning; science is a quest for objective truth.”It was a triumphant final round of images produced by the ACT, which was decommissioned in 2022. Gluscevic is now a research partner with the Simons Observatory Collaboration, also located in the Atacama Desert. It’s home to the next generation of CMB telescopes, some of which are already in use at the observatory, with more on the way. These telescopes will enable scientists to study CMB with even more precision and will also produce the highest resolution images of the universe in its infancy ever captured.

“From this, we will learn not only about the origins of cosmic structures, conditions in the early universe, and dynamics of the whole universe across its history, but we will also answer some of the biggest questions about the fundamental quantum constituents of our physical reality, including neutrinos, dark matter and more,” says Gluscevic.

Pardo’s research focuses on dark matter, a mysterious, invisible substance found throughout the universe. Though it doesn’t interact with light, dark matter exerts a gravitational pull that has shaped the very structure of the cosmos.

For the first 400,000 years after the Big Bang, strong radiation and electromagnetic forces prevented normal matter from coming together to form structures. But dark matter’s relative imperviousness to these conditions allowed it to collapse into deep gravitational wells. As the universe cooled, ordinary matter fell into these pockets, eventually forming galaxies. Glittering night-sky spectacles, such as the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way, owe their existence to this hidden cosmic scaffolding.

Pardo and Gluscevic co-lead the USC CosmoLab, a research hub for cosmologists and astrophysicists, based at USC Dornsife. The lab collaborates with scientists at institutions including Carnegie Observatories, the California Institute of Technology and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It’s also training the next generation of scientists who will advance our understanding of the universe’s origins.

“CosmoLab has been important for us to both collaborate with nearby institutions, as well as bring that research to the many undergraduate and graduate students who work within the lab,” says Pardo.

Origin Stories

Boom!Scientific theories explaining how the universe began echo, in some ways, one of our oldest proclivities: Humans have been telling stories about how and why our world exists since the dawn of consciousness.

These “cosmogonic” myths and religious teachings vary widely across the globe, says Tok Thompson, professor (teaching) of anthropology and coauthor, with Gregory Schrempp, of  The Truth of Myth. “There are some common themes, but no universals. Instead, we find a dazzling diversity of thought on how life began,” Thompson says.

Some origin stories center on a divine creator — for example, Christianity teaches that God created the universe in six days. Others, such as that of ancient Greek mythology, in which the gods emerged spontaneously from chaos, don’t feature an omniscient mastermind at all.

Beliefs about human genesis vary just as widely, says Thompson: “In some traditions, we came ‘down’ from the heavens, while others — notably the widespread Native American Emergence Myth — maintain that we came up to this world from an underworld below.”

Science may explain how the universe came into existence, but it doesn’t address the question of why, Thompson observes. “In the end, myths are a search for meaning; science is a quest for objective truth,” he says.

And while origin stories often parallel science in aiming to explain how we came to be, they also serve a distinct spiritual and psychological purpose, offering insights and meaning that go beyond what empirical evidence alone can provide.

“Science, at its root, stems from intrinsic curiosity — the desire to find out what’s actually true,” says Zlatan Damnjanovic, an associate professor of philosophy who teaches the course “Science, Religion and the Making of the Modern Mind.”

“Religion is not about obtaining factual knowledge, but about answers to questions that are unknowable, such as what comes after death,” he says. “Religion provides a framework of meaning for the world.”

Even if science were to produce definitive proof of the Big Bang, it’s unclear how much that would shift religious belief. “These things are abstract mathematical theories and formulae. Will they put an end to the questions? Probably not,” says Damnjanovic.

After all, science knows little about what came before the Big Bang. The theory itself picks up a fraction of a second into the start of inflation. It’s a bit like studying the sudden rise of a souffle without knowing what brought all the ingredients together.

What — or who — launched it all into action, and why, remain questions for theologians, philosophers and mythologists to interpret, at least for now.

End Times

Zap!Scientists are also working to solve another cosmic puzzle: how the universe might end.

A central focus is dark energy — the mysterious, driving force behind the universe’s accelerating expansion. Researchers had long believed this growth would continue indefinitely.

An alternative idea is emerging, although a formal scientific theory has not yet been developed. Dark energy may now be waning. If true, the universe’s expansion could slow, then halt — and ultimately reverse. This cosmic contraction could culminate in an apocalyptic event that astronomers and physicists have evocatively dubbed the “Big Crunch.”

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Kitt Peak, Arizona, which measures the effects of dark energy and the universe’s expansion history, recently released data that supports this idea. Pardo notes, however, that confirmation will require similar findings from independent research teams.

The end of the universe isn’t just a scientific question — it’s long been a concern of religious and mythic traditions. Most don’t view it as an event of perpetual annihilation. In spiritual teachings around the world, from Christianity to Hinduism to Zoroastrianism, a more hopeful theme emerges from doomsday stories — that of rebirth.

In ancient Norse mythology, for example, an apocalyptic event known as Ragnarök destroys the Earth, sun, moon — and even the gods. From this devastation, a new world rises, populated by just two human survivors.

If such an event were to come to pass, we can safely assume those two humans would once again set out to explain how it all began — and why.