Starter
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/seuforum/bb_popup_history
Movie.htm
What do you think that was about?
What was the noise at the start?
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the big bang
Starter
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/seuforum/bb_popup_historyMovie.htm
The frames are as follows:
 Just before the Big Bang
 Instant of the Big Bang
 First 3 minutes
 300 thousand years
 100 million years
 A billion years
 14 billion years
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Main Task
What actually happened?
4
Main Task
How do we
know when
something
happens?
5
Main Task
Show me the evidence!
6
Main Task
“from speculation to precision science”
Full sky picture of cosmic microwave radiation taken by WMAP 2003
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Main Task
cosmic microwave background radiation
8
Main Task
Timeline of the Universe
9
Main Task
Evolution of Universe: a scientific model
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Main Task
Inside the Large Hadron Collider
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Activity 1
The who did what? Soup
Georges Lemaître
Edwin Hubble
Alan Guth and Andrei Linde
Fred Hoyle
Arno Penzias & RobertWilson
DaveWilkinson
George Gamow
Robert Dicke & PJE Pebbles
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Activity 2
The Origins of the Universe: a chronology of ideas
The Kung Bushmen of the Kalahari
The Bakhtiari (Persia)
The Lapps
Ancient Chinese cultures
Ancient Hebrews
Ancient Greeks – e.g. the Pythagoreans
Ptolemaic theories
Alchemical theories of man and nature
The Renaissance scientists – e.g.
Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton
New age theories – from Einstein to today
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Activity 3
A Conference: finding out about
The Large Hadron Collider
 What is the standard model of particle physics? (include some
historical background)
 Why was the LHC constructed (for what purpose)? What risks
does it pose? How do you think decisions were made to go ahead
with its construction?
 How do you think the LHC will change the study of physics in
the future? (offer a comparative account of knowledge about
particle physics from its inception to today . . . and into the
future)
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Plenary
15
Plenary
People often ask questions like . . .
 If there was a Big Bang, then what was there before the Big Bang?
 If time began at the Big Bang, was there no time before that and . . . what
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
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does that mean?
Is the Big Bang an irrefutable fact?
If the Big Bang really happened, what made it happen?
Can events like the Big Bang just spontaneously happen?
and . . .Why on earth am I here?
From a theoretical physicist . . .
“I wish science could easily provide an answer
to these questions, but in my view, it cannot.
But that doesn’t mean it is impossible to
arrive at a well thought out worldview . . . go
back and study some more and make up your
own mind!”
Ard Louis, theoretical physicist (2005)
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