Wander through the rich tapestry of scientific milestones, from the cosmic birth of the Big Bang to the cosmic twilight of the Big Crunch. Explore the wonders of science not as distant observers but as active participants—Like You Were There.

Prepare to be surprised, enlightened, and inspired. This is not just a stroll through science; it’s a journey into the very heart of human discovery and ingenuity. This exploration of significant scientific events is neither linear nor predictable; it’s a mosaic of moments that encapsulate drama, passion, and the relentless pursuit of knowledge, where serendipity often plays a pivotal role.

It is an ideal book for everyone interested in broadening their knowledge and appreciation of science as it unfolded. It is also perfect for those who wish to embrace Einstein’s advice: ‘The important thing is to never stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.’

Kindle, paperback and hardback editions are available from Amazon.

EXCERPTS

Introduction

Science often appears abstract and distant; the thrilling journey of scientific pursuit and the excitement of discovery become lost in nebulous equations and theories. Imagine walking through the annals of scientific discovery as if you were standing beside Archimedes when he exclaims ‘Eureka!’ in his bath, witnessing the execution of Giordano Bruno as flames consume him, gaping at the tiny blue spark in a laboratory that heralded the radio age, and feeling the rush of adrenaline as you watch Marie Curie tirelessly refine a mountain of pitchblende ore to unravel the secrets of radioactivity In the words of  Carl Sagan, ‘Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known’. And within these pages, that incredible something awaits you. Wander through the rich tapestry of scientific milestones from the cosmic birth of the Big Bang and the cosmic twilight of the Big Crunch. Explore the wonders of science, not as distant observers, but as active participants—Like You Were There.

Prepare to be surprised, enlightened, and inspired. This is not just a walk through science; it’s a journey into the very heart of human discovery and ingenuity. This exploration of significant scientific events is neither linear nor predictable; it’s a mosaic of moments that encapsulate drama, passion, and the relentless pursuit of knowledge, where serendipity often plays a pivotal role.

It is an ideal book for everyone interested in broadening their knowledge and appreciation of science as it happened. It is also perfect for those who wish to pursue Einstein’s advice, ‘The important thing is to never stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.’

The stories here are short, sharp and simple and require no background in science. Additional information (marked with a paperclip symbol 📎) is also included to enable a complete understanding of the topic. 

Section 1

THE BEGINNING AND THE END

The universe begins with a whisper, the gentle murmur of creation echoing through the vastness of time.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

In the twilight of eternity, the universe takes its final bow, and the cosmic saga concludes with a whisper in the endless expanse of time.

Anonymous 

13.8 Billion Years Ago. The Beginning

There is no matter, no energy, no space—not even time

If you wish, you can begin every story with the age-old phrase ‘once upon a time’, but not this one. Time does not exist yet. Everything you view has a perspective, but not the event about to happen. There is no space—no below, no above, no ‘outside’ to stand and watch the primaeval explosion. There is no matter, no energy (therefore, no light). It is intensely dark, dark like darkness hiding darkness.

There is nothing except something infinitesimally small and unimaginably dense and hot—something called a singularity—that defies the laws of physics. And then this singularity explodes spontaneously. This explosion is the Big Bang. Matter, energy, time, and space begin at this instant, and the laws of physics come into play (and Einstein can rejoice).

The Big Bang is not like a giant bomb going off in a particular location in an otherwise space. Space does not exist. The Big Bang is an explosion of space itself. The explosion has no centre; it is happening everywhere. It is just like the inflation of a balloon on a scale, which makes words like gigantic and humongous look ridiculously puny.

After one billion trillion trillion trillionths of a second (10–43 seconds), the universe starts inflating. Space and time disentangle; the earliest meaningful time begins. Matter and energy are interchangeable.

The universe cools as it blows outwards, and by one hundred billion trillion trillionths of a second (10–35 seconds), cosmic expansion creates a large, smooth patch of space filled with quarks, the building blocks of matter. The expansion rate is now mind-boggling: imagine a pea growing to the size of the Milky Way in less time than it takes to blink.

After one hundred billion trillionths of a second (10–23 seconds), the universe is a superhot soup of electrons, quarks, photons, and other particles. The soup’s temperature is one thousand trillion trillion (or 1027) degrees Celsius.

After 10 microseconds, quarks combine to form protons and neutrons, and after 10 milliseconds, protons and neutrons begin to form hydrogen and helium nuclei.

At about 380,000 years, the universe cools to about 3000°C and protons, neutrons, and electrons combine to form other atoms. The newly born universe was opaque as there was no light, but the superhot soup now breaks up and photons, particles of light, stream across space in more or less straight lines. The universe is now transparent, and other forms of electromagnetic radiation can escape as gamma rays. As the universe continues to cool and expand, gamma rays change into X-rays, ultraviolet rays, visible light, and microwaves.

After 100 million years, the first stars and dwarf galaxies form from hydrogen gas that now permeates the universe. The first rays of starlight end the darkness of the universe.

After 300 million years, the dwarf galaxies start merging and building up bigger galaxies.

After 9 billion years, the sun and Earth are born.

After 13.8 billion years, because space is expanding, the universe, an expanse of flat space, has a radius of more than 13.8 billion light-years and 100 billion galaxies. Microwaves fill the universe and can be detected anywhere. This leftover warmth from the primaeval fireball, known as the cosmic microwave background, has a temperature of –270°C or 2.7 kelvin (3°C above the absolute zero).

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The edge of the universe is in time, not space. When you see an object in the sky, you see it after its light has had time to travel to you. For example, when you see Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, you see it as it was more than eight years ago.

What caused the Big Bang? What came before it? It is difficult to know as it happened before you could say ‘once upon a time’. We arrived on the scene 13.8 billion years too late to know what happened. Scientists are now searching for answers. We do not know what we do not know.  

13 Billion Years Ago. A Black Hole in the Early Universe

A monstrous heart of darkness

An enormous cloud of gas and dust in the centre of a galaxy condenses to form a compact nuclear disc. As this disc condenses further, it becomes unstable and collapses under its gravity into a point of zero volume and indefinite density—a singularity. At this point, the laws of physics break down, space has no meaning, and time stops.

The mass of this newly created enigmatic entity is more than 10 billion suns, yet it has a voracious appetite for more matter. It devours stars that come close to it, and matter falling into it disappears forever. It is a black hole, a supermassive black hole.

Matter falling into the black hole forms a vast disc of gas and dust. This disc, called the accretion disc, would eventually fall back into the black hole. The boundary separating the singularity and the accretion disc is the event horizon, a one-way spherical edge of the region of no escape. Nothing—not even light—can escape the event horizon. The radius of the event horizon of this black hole is about five times that of our solar system.

As no light can escape the black hole, you cannot see it even with the most powerful telescope. When matter from the accretion disc approaches the event horizon, it spirals around in loops with hypervelocity. If it collides with anything else before reaching the event horizon, it releases enormous kinetic energy, which converts into atomic and subatomic particles and electromagnetic radiation motions. Formed before reaching the event horizon, the particles and photons travel outward, brightening the galaxy around it. (Powerful telescopes can see the brilliance of the galaxy from which we can conclude that a supermassive black hole lurks at its centre. Of course, this does not provide absolute proof of the existence of the black hole.)

There is no place to hide when you are close enough to this black hole. The light from your image would be wrapped around the event horizon and visible to someone on the opposite side. Black holes have the remarkable ability to bend light rays.

Throwing a clock into this black hole is impossible, but imagine you could do it, too. It would slow down as it approaches the event horizon, and when it crosses the event horizon, it will freeze completely. There is no time to measure. It would also fade from view as gravity would stretch light from it, making it redder and redder until it appears from the view.

If you move closer, you will be sucked in. Its gravity would stretch your body into the shape of exceptionally long spaghetti. This process is known as spaghettification. The dead spaghetti then slams into the singularity of the black hole, crushing your remains to an infinite density.

As this black hole swallows up more matter, it swells. But you will never notice any change in it, except the increasing size of the diameter of its event horizon.

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After 13 billion years, the light from this black light also stretched as the universe expanded. The distant galaxies are moving away from us at a high speed that diminishes the intensity of light we receive from them. Besides, this light shifts slightly towards the red end of the spectrum. Red light has less energy than blue light. By measuring redshift, scientists can calculate the moment when the light was emitted. In 2011, scientists discovered a quasar—a very bright galaxy believed to be powered by a supermassive black hole at its centre. Its redshift showed that it was formed about 770 million years after the Big Bang.

5 Billion Years from Now. The Demise of the Sun

The spectacular death of a star

Five billion years from now. The sun is no longer a main sequence star. The main-sequence star—90 per cent of stars are main-sequence stars—fuses hydrogen nuclei into helium nuclei at its centre. This nuclear fusion produces energy that is radiated from the star’s surface as heat and light.

The sun has depleted its hydrogen supply—all stars are about 75 per cent hydrogen and 25 per cent helium when born—from its core. The nuclear burning moves outwards to a shell surrounding the intensely hot but inert helium core. As burning hydrogen exerts enormous pressure around it, the core begins to grow, and the sun reaches the last minute of its life: it expands to the size of Earth’s orbit into a red giant, ochre-red and extraordinarily luminous. As it swells, the sun blows out some of Earth’s material, and the lighter Earth, with weekend gravity, moves into a new, larger orbit. Earth’s water and atmosphere are boiled away. Mercury and Venus burn up like meteors.

After a few thousand years, the hydrogen in the shell of the red giant also exhausts. It now starts burning helium there. The increasing gravity of the material in the outer part forces the inner parts to condense and heat up. In huge bursts, lasting a few thousand years, the sun's outer layers start separating from the core and are completely blown away in a brisk, stellar wind. The red giant, stripped down to its hot core, evolves from orange to yellow, white, and finally blue. The exposed surface of the searing hot core has a temperature of about 100,000°C. Its energy bathes the escaping gas like a giant neon sign in ultraviolet light. The ultraviolet light breaks up molecules and strips atoms of their electrons. The gaseous cloud around the remaining remnant core, lit from inside by glowing atoms and ions and set against the cosmic darkness, presents a spectacular sight in the sky. The sun has now become a planetary nebula*. The ultraviolet radiation from this planetary nebula breaks down molecules of exposed rocks on Earth’s surface, covering it with an eerie glowing fog.

The dying sun can only maintain this gorgeous display for a few thousand years. The fuel in its dense core burns out and shrinks into a white dwarf – no more significant than Earth but 200,000 times heavier. It is so heavy that a teaspoonful of its matter weighs more than a ton. It no longer produces heat but is hot from early burning. It glows for a while until it cools down. The remnants of the planets, except Mercury and Venus, still orbit around this white dwarf.

After tens to hundreds of billions of years, the white dwarf cools down completely and turns black and cold. It no longer emits light. It is now a dead star—a black dwarf.

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*Planetary nebula is a misleading name. When the English astronomer William Herschel first observed the nebulae through his 7-inch-aperture reflecting telescope, they reminded him of the greenish planet Uranus, which he had discovered earlier in 1781. He named these fuzzy, cloudlike objects planetary nebulae, as many had vaguely round shapes. Nebulae (Latin for ‘clouds’), on the other hand, are vast interstellar clouds of glowing gas.

 It is also worth noting that there are no black dwarfs yet, but there will be in the future. About 10 billion white dwarfs have formed in the galaxy since the Big Bang and are still shining but dimly.

13.8 Billion Years and Counting. The End

In the dark

The universe is the 13.8-billion-year-old expanse of flat space filled with hundreds of billions of galaxies and vast clouds of glowing gas. It is expanding, and about six billion years ago, the expansion began speeding up.

Accepting that the universe is expanding, you might wonder whether it will continue expanding forever or whether the accelerating galaxies will stop and reverse their motion someday.

If the expansion continues to accelerate at the current rate, it will pull galaxies apart faster than light, and they will be out of our view. After about 100 billion years, all the evidence of the Big Bang will be lost to future civilisations. There are three clues to the Big Bang: (a) we can see distant galaxies moving away from us; (b) analysis of cosmic gas shows us the same mix of chemicals that were produced early in the Big Bang; and (c) we can measure the cosmic background radiation, the leftover warmth from the primaeval fireball background that permeates the universe.

If the acceleration of expansion intensifies, after about 50 billion years, the universe will end violently in a Big Rip, which will rip apart all structures from planets to stars to galaxies. Even molecules and their constituent subatomic particles will be torn apart.

If the cosmic expansion stops accelerating, the universe will expand forever, and the last stars will burn out in about 100 trillion years. It will bring the ‘heat death’ of the universe—an idea that comes from entropy, a measure of disorder or randomness of a system. The more random or disordered a system is the more significant the entropy. In a closed system, entropy must ultimately reach a maximum. Entropy is continually increasing in the universe. However, because the universe is a closed system, once all the energy in the universe is converted into heat, no energy will be available for work. This state of equilibrium will end the Universe with a Big Whimper. It will be a cold, dark universe, except for some dimly glowing black holes.

If the expansion slows down, after about 30 billion years, the galaxies will eventually fall together in a great collapse—a Big Crunch, a kind of reverse Big Bang. The Big Crunch will mimic the conditions that started the Big Bang and turn the universe into a singularity, marking the end of time. What would happen after the Big Crunch? Would another Big Bang follow, followed by another Big Crunch in an eternal cycle? We do not know.

The fate of the universe lies in dark energy and dark matter. More matter exists in the universe than we see as bright galaxies and stars. This so-called ‘missing mass’ comprises up to 95 per cent of the universe's mass and is in the form of dark energy and matter. Roughly 70 per cent of the universe is dark energy; dark matter makes up about 25 per cent. We are still in the dark about dark energy and dark matter. But we know that until a few billion years ago, matter controlled the universe, and its gravitational attraction had been slowing down its expansion. Then dark energy, an unknown form, took control of matter, causing the cosmic expansion to speed up.

The renowned physicist Niels Bohr once said, ‘Prediction is difficult, especially about the future.’ But scientists are working hard to predict the future of the universe—and the future of matter, energy, space, and time, which began with it.

If you are worried, try to find a wormhole, a tunnel in spacetime, to escape from this dying universe to another. After all, many scientific theories support the idea of parallel universes, which are part of a larger multiverse.

Sections 2

SCIENCE ON TRIAL 

What will become of the sheep if a wolf is the judge?

Anonymous proverb

1600. The Execution

‘The time will come when all will see as I see’

9 February

It is freezing cold in Rome’s vast and ornate Hall of Inquisition, a mighty institution that preserves the beliefs of the Catholic Church. In the candle-lit room, fifteen illustrious cardinals of the Holy Office are seated on high-backed plush chairs, forming an arc around the accused—a 51-year-old, small, thin man with black hair and deep brown eyes, kneeling silently. The Grand Inquisitor, Cardinal Severina, reads the charges.

The eight counts of heresy include blasphemy, immoral conduct, belief in the movement of the Earth, and an infinite universe filled with innumerable worlds that potentially harbour life. Cardinal Severina asks him to recant his belief and pray for mercy to God. The man remains silent. The cardinal excommunicates the heretic and sentences him to die ‘without shedding of blood’ (in other words, burn him alive at the stake).

The defiant man lifts his head and declares, ‘Perhaps you, my judges, pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it. The time will come when all will see as I see.’

He is given eight days’ grace to recant and deny his beliefs, but his belief in the truth remains unshakable.

17 February

The man lies naked on a rack, his ankles and wrists bound tightly, in a dark, dreary, and damp dungeon in the terrible Tor di Nona prison in Rome, which has been his home for the past two years. In the feeble light of winter dawn, his guards ask him to put on the sulphur-coloured garb of heresy, covered with pictures of devils and crimson flames and crosses.

On that chilly morning, he is led in chains through a howling, fanatical crowd to the site of the execution, a public square called the Campo de’ Fiori. He walks calmly and with dignity, his face serene, his head high. He is stripped naked, and a shirt of pitch that extends from his waist to his feet is put over him so that he will not die as quickly.

The executioner ties him to the stake, forces a gag in his mouth to silence his final words, piles firewood, charcoal and kindling up to the chin and places a torch between the feet. As the flames blaze around him, a priest pushes forward and presses a crucifix into his hands, but the man turns his head away. Within seconds, flames sear him, smoke and fire surround him. When the fire subsides, his remains are powdered and blown in the wind so that no relic of the heretic would survive.

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The flames consumed the body of Giordano Bruno, but the embers of his pyre became a spark that would ignite the flames of scientific enlightenment. In 1889, a statue in honour of him was erected at the exact site where he was burned. The statue in Campo de’ Fiori, within walking distance of the Vatican, is now surrounded by a colourful and busy market.

Bruno, a cosmologist, philosopher and Dominican monk, was an ardent believer in the Copernican system. In 1543, Copernicus rejected the ancient and commonly held wisdom that the Earth stood still at the centre of the universe and that the sun spun around it. On the contrary, he declared that the Moon rotated around the Earth, and the Moon and Earth spun around the sun together. Bruno’s ideas went beyond Copernicus as he proposed an infinite universe filled with innumerable worlds.

In 1584, Bruno published two important books, The Ash Wednesday Supper and On the Infinite Universe and the Worlds. The second book started his fatal dispute with the powerful and dogmatic Catholic Church, whose motto was ‘Do not examine, only believe’.

Bruno viewed the relations between God, the universe, and humans differently. In this view, humans were no longer at the centre of the universe, and their place in the universe became a minor incident in the history of an insignificant planet. The Church feared that Bruno’s view would threaten the idea of heaven lying just beyond the sphere of fixed stars and would be dangerous to the Catholic faith.

Bruno’s ideas, once considered heretical, now form the foundations of modern cosmology.

© Surendra Verma 2025

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