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!