The evolving Universe

Introduction

This unit explores origins of the Universe by looking in detail at events immediately following the Big Bang. Starting with looking at the cooling of the very early Universe, the unit then moves on to the inflation era, the quark-lepton and the hadron era. Then the unit looks at how fundamental particles began to synthesise to form nuclei, and from here it discusses the development of larger structures like stars and galaxies. By examining closely the forces in play and the interactions of fundamental particles in these very early stages of the Universe we can begin to understand how it turned into the Universe that we live in now.

This unit is from our archive and is an adapted extract from How the universe works (S197) which is no longer taught by The Open University. If you want to study formally with us, you may wish to explore other courses we offer in this subject area [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .