A Brief Planetarium Show - Act 1

Act 1 the Big Bang

In the end, the question of where the universe came from, in the beginning, is a matter of belief. What came before the universe is impossible to view with our own eyes, and what happened at its actual birth happened billions of years ago. All we can see and wonder at is what the universe shows us today, not the end produce but the evolving form of the universe at this particular moment of its history. But even what we see out there is misleading, for we see each object as it was when the light reaching our wondering eyes left on its journey to Earth - in the case of distant galaxies that may be millions of years ago. Looking out into space is looking into the past. Observing what has happened since the brief dawning of our own astronomical observations, we can only project back to the beginning. Back to what the evidence supports might have happened. Back to the origin of the space/time/mass/energy mix we find ourselves in on Earth, and in our beautiful night sky.

Most scientists today believe in the Big Bang Theory of the creation of the universe. They believe that everything that was to be was originally compressed into a single point, a singularity containing the very basic building blocks of all that came afterwards. We represent that singularity here with a single point of brilliant light. What happened next happened with inconceivable speed and power. The singularity, say scientists, must have exploded in an unimaginable outpouring of energy and subatomic particles in every direction - and the universe was born. The outward bound particles began combining according to the ingrained laws of nature, growing ever larger and cooling as they sped apart at unbelievable speed. Gradually the universe began cooling, leaving a swarm of outbound proto-galaxies as hydrogen atoms formed, grouped, and turned on as the first stars, pinwheeling about themsevles in clumps to the eternal song of gravity, the most pervasive of the underlying forces. The galaxies were born as the expansion wore on towards infinity, their combined starlight shifting to the red end of the spectrum as they receded.

In the vast collection of galaxies was one typical spiral member, a huge pinwheel of stars we know as the Milky Way galaxy. Our galaxy. A spiral of billions upon billions of stars. Far outside in the flar-flung reaches of one spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy a smallish, normal yellow dwarf star was born about 8 billion years ago. Around this star revolved gas and dust, which over endless time grouped together to form planets, most importantly to us the Earth upon which we stand. LIghting our skies by day, this star enabled life itself to spring forth, including us. At night though we can still see, from within, our glorious spiral galaxy and a few of its innumerable stars as we continue our outward journey from the ancient Big Bang to we know not where.

Behold the stars!