The expansion of the Universe started many billions of years ago

from a very hot, very small state. From that hot, small state, it mushroomed and
evolved into the Universe we know today.
Cosmologists call that process of expansion the Big Bang because at some phases,
especially in the beginning, the process was rather like an explosion.
Much of understanding the Big Bang is extrapolating between knowledge of
particle physics today and projections from the mathematical model of an
expanding universe in general relativity. The Einstein equations give us a
mathematical model for describing how fast the Universe would expanding at what
size and time, given the energy density of matter and radiation at that time. The
guesses about the matter and radiation density of the early Universe is based on
the ancient light reaching us from the past in our night skies, and study of
elementary particle physics, through theory and experiment.

The Big Bang Tour starts here

(i)Radiation fills the Universe

TIME: between 10-12 and 10-10 seconds.

This is where the Big Bang officially begins. Somehow at the end of the
inflationary era, the Universe was left in a small, hot, dense quantum state. The so-
called vacuum energy of the quantum fields changes into a seething soup of
photons, gluons and other elementary particles. In the Einstein equations of
general relativity, the expansion of the Universe can be driven by energy density in
the form of matter and radiation. During the first phase of the Big bang, the
radiation part of the energy density is so much bigger than the matter part of the
energy density that we can forget matter exists, at least for a while.
 (ii)Quarks outnumber antiquarks

TIME: 10-11 seconds

At this stage of the Big Bang, the tiny expanding Universe is filled with radiation
creating pairs of particles and antiparticles, and pairs of particles and antiparticles
annihilating back into radiation.
We know from observing elementary particles in the present era that every known
particle has an antiparticle with the opposite charge and the same spin. (Particles
with zero charge are their own antiparticles.) The antiparticle of a quark is called
an antiquark. At the beginning of the Big Bang, the Universe was so hot that quarks
and antiquarks were created from radiation and annihilated back into radiation at a
high rate. There were an equal number of quarks and antiquarks on the average at
any one moment.
But as the Universe expanded, it cooled, and the cooler radiation was less likely to
create quark-antiquark pairs. As quarks and antiquarks "froze" out of the radiation
background, a greater number of quarks than antiquarks were left over.
We know this must have happened, because we observe more quarks than
antiquarks today. All of the protons and neutrons in all of the elements in the
Universe are made out of quarks, not antiquarks. Quarks are clearly more numerous
than antiquarks.
But this quark excess can't be explained using the Standard Model of particle
physics. Therefore the domination of quarks over antiquarks is an area where
studies of the early Universe could shed light on particle physics we haven't yet
been able to study by direct particle scattering in an accelerator.
 (iii)Weak nuclear bosons become massive

TIME: 10-10 seconds.

At this stage of expansion and cooling of the Universe, the average particle energy
is dropping to the typical energy scale of the weak nuclear force, and something
dramatic happens to the particles that transmit the weak nuclear force.
In elementary particle physics, we have learned that the bosons that transmit the
weak nuclear force (as in nuclear fission) are very heavy, and that they gain their
large mass through a process known as spontaneous symmetry breaking. This
process occurs at some definite energy scale, at the energy of the weak nuclear
force. Above that energy scale, the weak nuclear bosons are massless like the
photon that transmits the electromagnetic force between electrons and protons
and the gluon that transmits the strong nuclear force between quarks. Below that
energy scale, the weak bosons are big and heavy, and so the weak nuclear force
only acts over a very small distance scale, about 10-16 centimeters, about one
thousandth the size of a nucleus.
For this reason, cosmologists believe that when the Universe was so hot that the
average energy of the radiation is above the energy of the weak nuclear force, the
weak nuclear bosons were massless and the weak nuclear force had an infinite
range like that of the photons and gluons. But as the Universe expanded and
cooled, the average energy dropped to the level where spontaneous symmetry
breaking occurred, and weak nuclear bosons gained mass. This slowed them down
and restricted their force to a small range.
 (iv) Quarks and gluons are confined

TIME: 10-4 seconds.

The Universe has now expanded and cooled to the point where something incredible
happens to the quarks and gluons that are popping around at high speed by
themselves. They undergo an enormous Universe-wide phase transformation where
all of the quarks and gluons in the Universe become confined together inside
mesons such as the pi meson and baryons such as the proton and neutron. Prior to
this era, protons and neutrons and mesons don't exist, there is just a hot soup of
quarks and gluons in their place.
Actually, to be honest, particle physicists have only measured quarks and gluons
that are trapped inside baryons and mesons. Nobody has ever measured a quark or
a gluon zipping around freely on its own. In the theory of quarks and gluons, called
Quantum Chromo dynamics (QCD for short), it is believed there is a phase
transition at high temperature where quarks and gluons become deconfined and can
and do zip around freely by themselves.
The details of this deconfinement transition are still not well understood, even in
the theory. However, judging by the past successes of theoretical particle physics
in predicting phenomena that were later observed, it's probably a safe bet to say
that as the Universe cooled to a temperature below the deconfinement
temperature of QCD, quarks and gluons were no longer able to zip around on their
own and became confined together into the mesons and baryons that produced the
Universe we see today.
 (v)Proton to neutron ratio is fixed

TIME: 1 second.

Prior to this era of the Universe, neutrons and protons were rapidly changing into
each other through the emission and absorption of neutrinos. Now the Universe
has expanded and cooled to the point where that process slows down, and at the
end of the slowing down, we are left with about seven protons for every neutron.
How does this happen? Particle physicists have known for a long time that a
neutron just sitting around will all by itself decay into a proton, an electron and an
electron antineutrino, but a proton won't decay into anything. If we hit a proton
with a electron antineutrino at high enough energy, we can make a neutron and a
positron (an antielectron) come out the other end. And if we hit a proton with an
electron, we get a neutron and an electron neutrino at the other end. So neutrons
change into protons by themselves, but the reverse process requires extra energy
from some kind of collision.
When the Universe was sufficiently hot and dense, there were so many electrons
and antineutrinos hitting protons and changing them into neutrons that an equal
numbers of protons and neutrons are changing into each other at the same rate.
However, as the Universe kept expanding and cooling, the average energy level of
the particles dropped and so did the rate of neutrinos hitting protons and changing
them into neutrons. The neutrinos and antineutrinos decoupled from the rest of
the matter and radiation, and interactions between neutrinos and other particles
stopped being a very big factor in the dynamics of the Universe.
So the protons were no longer being changed to neutrons, but the neutrons were
still changing spontaneously all by themselves into protons. That eventually left us
with about seven times more protons than neutrons in the Universe.
To make a hydrogen nucleus, we only need one proton, no neutrons. To make a
helium nucleus, we need two protons and two neutrons. Therefore, a direct
consequence of an excess of protons over neutrons would be an excess of hydrogen
over helium, and that is what is observed today. This gives us a vital observational
validation for the Big Bang theoretical description of the early expanding Universe.
 (vi)Protons and neutrons form nuclei

TIME: 100 seconds.

At this point in the expansion and cooling of the Universe, the average
temperature is low enough so that neutrons and protons can stick together and
make nuclei of the lighter elements such as hydrogen, helium and lithium. Physicists
call this process nucleosynthesis, and it had to occur before the structures we
observed today, such as atoms and molecules, could exist.
Neutrons and protons only attract each other at very short distances, less than
10-13 centimeters. The strong nuclear force that holds them together is confined
and cancels out at larger distances. So in order to form nuclei, neutrons and
protons have to spend some time in very close proximity to one another. This can't
happen if the temperature is too high, because then the protons and neutrons will
be moving too fast to spend much time near one another.
The majority of the neutrons in the Universe wind up stuck in combinations of two
protons, two neutrons, in the helium nucleus. A few neutrons contribute to lithium,
with three protons and three neutrons, and the leftovers wind up in deuterium,
which is an isotope of hydrogen with one proton and one neutron.
Nucleosynthesis sets the stage for the formation of atoms and then galaxies and
stars.
 (vii) Matter dominates over radiation

TIME: 10,000 years.

As usual, the Universe is still cooling and expanding. But as this happens, more and
more matter is being created by the high energy radiation. And as the Universe
expands, the matter loses less energy than does the radiation.
Eventually, the energy density in the matter -- mostly in the newly-formed nuclei
-- becomes larger than the energy density in radiation, in massless or nearly
massless particles, mainly photons. This means that in the equations of relativity
that described cosmic expansion, the number representing the energy density of
matter becomes much bigger than the number that represents the energy density
of radiation, and we can forget about the radiation in those equations and only
concentrate on what happens to the matter. The matter then dominates in
determining us how the Universe expands from this era on.
At the end of this process, photons scatter much more with each other than they
do with matter. As a result, the energy exchange between matter and radiation
becomes less efficient. The photons thermalize and start behaving as thermal
black body radiation. We can measure this cosmic background radiation today.
After having cooled off for many billions of years, the temperature of this
radiation is just a few degrees above absolute zero. But we can measure this
temperature, and we can also measure how this temperature of the cosmic
background radiation varies with direction in the Universe. This tells us important
details about the Big Bang and about particle physics as well.
 (viii)Protons and electrons form hydrogen

TIME: 500,000 years.

By this time there are plenty of protons and other light nuclei in the universe, and
there are also plenty of electrons. But until now, the Universe has been too hot and
dense for the electrons to be captured for very long by a nucleus, without being
smacked out of orbit by collisions with other particles.
When the temperature of the Universe cools to the point where the average speed
of an average electron isn't high enough to escape capture by a proton, then atoms
start to form. Since the only nuclei that exist are hydrogen, helium and lithium, the
first atoms to exist are therefore hydrogen, helium and lithium.
The heavier elements, such as carbon which is necessary for life as we know it to
evolve, are created in a much more interesting manner.

(ix)Hydrogen gas makes first stars

TIME: one billion years.

Now that the radiation has cooled and decoupled from the matter, and almost all
the electrons are bound up to nuclei in hydrogen, helium and lithium atoms,
gravitational forces become important. Small fluctuations in the matter density
and gravitational field begin to grow and coalesce. Hydrogen gas is pulled together
by gravity until the force causes the gas to collapse and ignite through hydrogen
fusion to form the first stars.
 (x)Stars produce heavier elements

TIME: 2-13 billion years.

When stars first began to form and galaxies took shape, hydrogen, helium and
lithium were basically the only three elements in the Universe. The heavier
elements come from inside stars. Stars consume hydrogen and create heavier
elements through the process of nuclear fusion. All the elements in the Universe
today that are heavier than lithium come from the inside of stars.
How did these elements get outside the stars? The heavy elements don't just leap
from the insides of the stars where they were made. The heavier elements we see
in the world today were all ejected from stars that had reached the end of their
lifespan and exploded into supernovas before settling into old age as a white dwarf,
a neutron star or a black hole.The process of making the heavy elements and then
ejecting them into the Universe takes place over a time scale that is the lifespan
of a star. That's why the time scale here runs from 2 billion to 13 billion years.

(xi)Life evolves

TIME: check your local TV Guide

And here we are, conscious beings able to seek out information about our Universe,
and use it to entertain ourselves.

(xii)The future of our Universe??

TIME: billions of years from now.

Are we the only ones? We don't know how probable life is in the Universe. The
problem is, we probably don't have an infinite amount of time to find out. The
latest observations of very old galactic clusters, combined with measurements
from supernovas, seem to indicate that the Universe is going to keep on expanding
and cooling forever.
Eventually the stars will burn all of their hydrogen, and things could get really cold
and boring.
Until then, it doesn't hurt to try to figure out whether the evolution of life has
occurred anywhere else in the Universe.