Física del Cosmos
Cosmology
Part I: overview
Academic year 2015-16
This lecture
• This first part of provides an overview of cosmology.
• Cosmic evolution and timeline.
• Some key observations: recession of galaxies (Hubble’s law and redshift)
and the cosmic microwave background radiation.
• Facts, predictions and uncertainties of modern cosmology.
• Large scale distribution of matter.
• The secret of the night sky.
What is Cosmology?
• Modern cosmology was born in the aftermath of the formulation of
Einstein’s General Relativity theory (1915).
• Some general things about cosmology:
✓ It is the scientific study of the large-scale structure of our Universe.
✓It studies the very distant past, the origin of the Universe, its future
evolution and the average distribution of matter (galaxies) and radiation.
✓The main player is gravity, but one also needs quantum physics,
properties of matter and radiation, etcetera.
✓Modern cosmology is a mixture of well understood physics and some
quite uncertain physics that lies at the boundary of our knowledge.
Cosmic length scales (I)
Galaxy: 105 light years
Group of galaxies: 106 light years
Distance Sun-Earth : 8 light minutes Cluster of galaxies: 107 light years
~ few Mpc
Cosmic length scales (II)
Super-cluster: 108 light years
~ 100 Mpc
“Walls” and “Voids”: 109 light years
Visible Universe: 1010 light years
~ few Gpc
Phases of the cosmic evolution
cosmic time
matter
dominates
cosmic
expansion
radiation
dominates
particle
energy scale
Cosmic timeline
Further away = further back
A key concept:
looking further away in space also means looking further back in time
(where physics becomes increasingly uncertain!).
Main predictions of the “Big Bang” model
• Cosmic Expansion:
The model predicts large scale motion as a result of the expanding
spacetime. Observationally, this is manifested as the Hubble recession
of galaxies.
• Nucleosynthesis (BBN)
It took place in the first 3-4 minutes, mostly creating hydrogen and
helium. The relative abundances of the produced light elements can be
calculated. The theoretical predictions are in good agreement with
observations.
• Cosmic radiation microwave background (CMB):
The primordial electromagnetic radiation (photons) decoupled from
matter when the first hydrogen atoms were formed, about 400.000 years
after the big bang. The thermalised photon gas cooled as a consequence
of cosmic expansion.
Cosmology: some solid facts
• Recession of galaxies (= cosmic expansion)
• Linear (approximately) Hubble’s law.
• Cosmic microwave background.
• Galactic & stellar structure and evolution.
• “Big bang” = as we go back in time the universe becomes increasingly
hotter, denser and geometrically more curved.
Cosmology: plausible physics
• Accelerating expansion (cosmological constant, dark energy ...).
• Dark matter (invisible galactic matter component).
• Inflation (rapid expansion in the early Universe).
• All these constitute some of the most important open problems of modern
physics (and, of course, are heavily researched).
The redshift factor z
• Emitted radiation by a moving source (a galaxy) is redshifted (lower
frequency) or blueshifted (higher frequency) with respect to the source’s rest
• The “redshift factor” z is
defined in terms of the
emitted & observed
wavelengths:
obs
1+z ⌘
em
redshift: z>0
blueshift: z < 0
• The source’s line-of-sight velocity is related to z by the “Doppler” formula:
v ⇡ cz
Cosmic expansion: Hubble’s law
• 1920s: the first evidence of cosmic expansion provided by the receding
motion of “extragalactic nebulae” (galaxies).
• Hubble’s law: simple linear relation between recession velocity & distance.
cz The redshift is a
v = H0 d H0 = Hubble’s constant d=
H0 measure of distance!
Hubble’s original observations:
The data points are galaxies with
measured redshift and distance.
Hubble’s law: modern version
The expanding Universe (cartoon)
Each galactic observer sees all other
galaxies receding isotropically
The Hubble constant
• As discussed later, the Hubble constant is roughly the age of the Universe:
1
tage ⇠
H0
• Earlier estimates had led to an (erroneous) age below the age of old stars!
• Modern value (with a ~1% accuracy,
measured by the Planck satellite):
1 1
H0 ⇡ 68 km s Mpc
tage ⇡ 13.8 Gyr
A reminder on observations
• The naked-eye night sky is made of our own galaxy’s stars.
Nearby galaxies can be barely seen (Andromeda, Magellanic Clouds).
• Seeing most galaxies requires large telescopes. But even with the most
powerful telescopes almost all visible galaxies have redshift z < 1.
• Distant (high redshift) galaxies are extremely dim objects.
• Since large distances mean looking further back in time, eventually you
get to a stage where the first galaxies were not formed yet.
• The furthest visible galaxies are at about z ~ 8. Theory suggests that the
first stars were formed at z ~ 10.
• The CMB radiation originates from a time with z~1100.
Matter-radiation spatial distribution (I)
General trend: the larger the observed spatial scale, the more homogeneous
matter and radiation appear to be.
galaxies: z ~ 0 - 6,
lumpy distribution
CMB: z ~ 1100,
smooth distribution
Matter-radiation spatial distribution (II)
Cosmic Background Radiation
• This is the relic radiation from the time when matter and photons decoupled
(recombination era ~ 400.000 years after the big bang). The radiation is
thermal with a black body temperature spectrum.
• The radiation cools with expansion, its present temperature is T = 2.7 K.
• The tiny deviations in temperature reflect the length-scale of structures in
the early Universe. These are sensitive to the global cosmic dynamics and the
geometry of the Universe.
Eternal Universe? Olbers' paradox
• Before the era of modern cosmology the
Universe was thought to be infinite,
unchanging and uniformly filled with stars/
galaxies.
• If that was true then at every direction in the
sky one would observe some stars shining.
• The resulting night sky would be uniformly bright, instead of dark!
This is the famous paradox pointed out by Olbers in 1826.
• The paradox can be resolved if stars have a finite lifetime and/or the
Universe undergoes large-scale expansion (resulting in radiation being
redshifted). The very existence of a dark night sky is evidence of an
evolving Universe!
