he displacement of spectral lines toward longer wavelengths (the red end of the spectrum) in

radiation from distant galaxies and celestial objects. This is interpreted as a Doppler shift that is
proportional to the velocity of recession and thus to distance.

Consider that most astronomers 100 years ago believed that our whole universe
consisted of just one galaxy, our own Milky Way. In the 1920s, Hubble was among the
first to recognize that there is a universe of galaxies located beyond the boundaries of
our Milky Way.

During the 1920s, Edwin Hubble observed stars that vary in brightness in a patch of
light known at the time as the Andromeda nebula. He knew that these stars changed in
brightness in a way that depended on their true brightness. He then saw how bright they
looked to find the distance to the Andromeda nebula.

At the time, many astronomers believed that the Andromeda nebula was a forming solar
system, located within the Milky Way’s boundaries. Hubble showed that this patch of
light was really a separate galaxy – what we know today as the Andromeda galaxy – the
nearest large spiral galaxy beyond our Milky Way.

Today, we know that this nearest large spiral galaxy, the Andromeda galaxy – is 2.2
million light-years beyond our Milky Way. We also know that other galaxies extend
around us in space for many billions of light-years. But to people in the 1920s, it was a
revelation! As soon as the spiral nebulae – like the Andromeda galaxy – were revealed
as separate galaxies, the known universe got much bigger!
The answer involved the light of galaxies as a whole. Astronomers observed that the
light of distant galaxies was shifted toward the red end of the light spectrum. This red
shift was interpreted as a sign that the galaxies are moving away from us. Hubble and
his colleagues compared the distance estimates to galaxies with their red shifts. And –
on March 15, 1929 – Hubble published his observation that the farthest galaxies are
moving away faster than the closest ones.

This is the insight that became known as Hubble’s law.

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is thought to be leftover radiation from the
Big Bang, or the time when the universe began. As the theory goes, when the universe
was born it underwent a rapid inflation and expansion. (The universe is still expanding
today, and the expansion rate appears different depending on where you look). The CMB
represents the heat left over from the Big Bang.
You can't see the CMB with your naked eye, but it is everywhere in the universe. It is
invisible to humans because it is so cold, just 2.725 degrees above absolute zero
(minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 273.15 degrees Celsius.) This means its
radiation is most visible in the microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Origins and discovery

The universe began 13.8 billion years ago, and the CMB dates back to about 400,000
years after the Big Bang. That's because in the early stages of the universe, when it
was just one-hundred-millionth the size it is today, its temperature was extreme: 273
million degrees above absolute zero, according to NASA.
Any atoms present at that time were quickly broken apart into small particles (protons
and electrons). The radiation from the CMB in photons (particles representing quantums
of light, or other radiation) was scattered off the electrons. "Thus, photons wandered
through the early universe, just as optical light wanders through a dense fog," NASA
wrote.

About 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe was cool enough that hydrogen
could form. Because the CMB photons are barely affected by hitting hydrogen, the
photons travel in straight lines. Cosmologists refer to a "surface of last scattering" when
the CMB photons last hit matter; after that, the universe was too big. So when we map
the CMB, we are looking back in time to 380,000 years after the Big Bang, just after the
universe was opaque to radiation.

American cosmologist Ralph Apher first predicted the CMB in 1948, when he was doing
work with Robert Herman and George Gamow, according to NASA. The team was
doing research related to Big Bang nucleosynthesis, or the production of elements in
the universe besides the lightest isotope (type) of hydrogen. This type of hydrogen was
created very early in the universe's history.
Robert Wilson discovered the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation in 1964 along with Arno Penzias,
putting the Big Bang theory on solid footing. Wilson and Penzias won the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics for the find.
(They shared the award with Soviet scientist Pyotr Kapitsa.)
(Image credit: Clive Grainger (CfA))
But the CMB was first found by accident. In 1965, two researchers with Bell Telephone
Laboratories (Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson) were creating a radio receiver, and
were puzzled by the noise it was picking up. They soon realized the noise came
uniformly from all over the sky. At the same time, a team at Princeton University (led by
Robert Dicke) was trying to find the CMB. Dicke's team got wind of the Bell experiment
and realized the CMB had been found.

Both teams quickly published papers in the Astrophysical Journal in 1965, with Penzias
and Wilson talking about what they saw, and Dicke's team explaining what it means in
the context of the universe. (Later, Penzias and Wilson both received the 1978 Nobel
Prize in physics).

The observed abundance of light elements supports the

big bang theory. The theory predicts that the universe is
composed of 73% hydrogen and 25% helium by mass.
Helium-3 was formed from the fusion of two deuterium nuclei and a release of a
neutron.
Among the light elements formed, deuterium, helium-3, helium-4, and lithium-7
were stable. Beryllium-7 was unstable and decayed spontaneously to lithium-7.
Elements heavier than beryllium are formed through stellar nucleosynthesis. Stellar nucleosynthesis is the
process by which elements are formed within stars. The abundances of these elements change as the
stars evolve.
The star formation theory proposes that stars form due to the collapse of the dense regions of a molecular
cloud.

As the cloud collapses, the fragments contract to form a stellar core called
protostar.

GOAL!
Lithium-7 was synthesized from helium-4 and tritium.

Abundance of Light Elements

However, the temperature of the universe was still much greater than the binding energy of deuterium.
When the temperature cooled down below 1010 K, deuterium nuclei combined with other nuclei to form
heavier ones.
Beryllium-7 was produced from helium-3 and helium-4.
Big bang Nucleosynthesis
When the contraction stops, the gravitational equilibrium is reached, and the protostar has become a
main sequence star.

EVOLUTION OF STARS
Helium-4 was also synthesized from deuterium and helium-3.

Hydrogen-Helium Abundance

Hydrogen and helium account for nearly all the nuclear matter in today's universe.
This is consistent with the standard or "big bang" model. The process of forming the
hydrogen and helium and other trace constituents is often called "big bang
nucleosynthesis". Schramm's figures for relative abundances indicate that helium is
about 25% by mass and hydrogen about 73% with all other elements constituting less
than 2%. Carroll & Ostlie give 23 to 24% helium. There is a window of uncertainty,
but it is clear that hydrogen and helium make up 98% plus of the ordinary matter in
the universe. This high percentage of helium argues strongly for the big bang model,
since other models gave very small percentages of helium. Since there is no known
process which significantly changes this H/He ratio, it is taken to be the ratio which
existed at the time when the deuteron became stable in the expansion of the universe.
This ratio is significant as a test of cosmological models since it will be affected by
the time period from the time when the temperature dropped below that necessary to
produce neutrons from protons to the time when the deuteron became stable, halting
the decay of the free neutrons.
Basically , the hydrogen-helium abundance helps us to model the expansion rate of
the early universe. If it had been faster, there would be more neutrons and more
helium. If it had been slower, more of the free neutrons would have decayed before
the deuterium stability point and there would be less helium.
 The modeling of the production of helium and the
hydrogen-helium ratio also makes predictions about other
nuclear species, particularly 7Li, 2H(deuterium) and 3He.
These observed abundances simultaneously fit the big bang
model within a narrow range. The shaded areas represent
measurements from regions which have a very small
abundance of heavy elements, so that they seem to be good
samples of primordial abundances. Besides being a
sensitive test of the big bang model, the abundance of
helium also correlates best with three types of neutrinos,
rather than two or four. The presence of another neutrino
species, and thus another round of leptons would give a
higher helium abundance by about a percent.

The ratio of the number of baryons per photon was one of

the contributions of the discovery of the 3K background
radiation. Those measurements permitted a calculation of
the photon energy density in the universe and the range of
estimates for baryon density gave a baryon/photon ration
of about 10-9.

Data from Boesgaard, A. M. and Steigman, G., "Big Bang

nucleasynthesis: Theories and Observations", Ann. Rev.
Astron. and Astrophys. 23, 319 (1985).
Illustration of hydrogen-helium abundance