but wait! part 1

But don’t get fooled by all this goodness and such! There are issues with the big bang theory. A good thing to do next would be perhaps to go through these issues one by one to take a closer look at what goes into the theory and what physics need to consider when trying to figure this out. The fist problem we can tackle is the horizon problem. If we look at the picture I’ve included you will see two main characters form xkcd (an extremely funny and nerdy comic). Hat guy is looking off into space in one directions and our main guy is looking off in the other. They see two different features of space. Now for the examples sake let’s say these two features are so far apart that the light from the galaxy on the right hasn’t reached the nebula on the left with the current age of the universe and vise versa. As you know from everyday experience for two things, like a very cold ice cube and a warm cup of cider, to have similar properties, like their temperature, they need to be in contact. It’s the same with these stellar objects. In order for one to have the same properties as the other they need to be in contact. Something, like light, needs to be exchanged between them in order for them to share the same properties. But here the light hasn’t had time travel that far and they still share those properties. We know that for sure because we are in between them and light has had time to make it to us. It’s like this across the universe. There are properties that the whole universe shares even thought the whole universe hasn’t had time to be “in contact” yet. At least that’s the way I understand it. But what I don’t understand is why this is a problem. Why couldn’t the universe have just been programmed with those parameters? Why does one thing have to be in contact with something else to have the same properties? For me this is the most mysterious cosmological problem and one I would like to study more in depth at some later date.