"In early 1998, two groups of astrophysicists made a startling announcement. The universe, which had always been thought to be expanding, and gradually slowing down, might actually be speeding up" (Fox 1). It turned out that there was a mysterious energy that was resisting gravity and enlarging the universe at vast speeds. Now that this new information had arisen, scientists had to adjust their current knowledge, modifying the big bang theory. .
In the beginning, there was "a nothingness in which packets of energy fleeted in and out of existence, popping into oblivion as quickly as they appeared. One of these fluctuations had just enough energy to take off" (Fox 9). That searing hot ball of energy expanded in space and time in one big bang and ultimately cooled down, creating matter.
The first astronomer to discover that the universe is expanding was none other than Edwin Hubble. In 1929, Hubble began to study redshifts, quasars that appear redder as it moves farther away. The relationship between distance and redshift is now known as Hubble's Law. Hubble's discovery concluded that the universe is expanding. The further the galaxy was, the faster it moved. Now that it was official, there needed to be a reason why the universe was expanding. .
Even before Hubble's discovery, Einstein's general relativity theory gives a reasonable answer to why the universe is expanding. "According to the theory, objects moving in a gravitational field follow curved trajectories simply because space and time are themselves curved" (Parsons 24). Another piece of supporting evidence of the big bang theory is that the giant explosion fifteen billion years ago created billions and billions of lightweight particles that would unite to form heavier ones. These smaller particles: protons, electrons, and neutrons, would make up each atom, which is the basis of all matter. Thus, the explosion provided everything needed to produce a universe.