Introduction to Big History

Which of the following statements is the best definition of Big History?

• Big History is the story of humans since the advent of writing language.

• Big History is the story of how the Universe came into existence and how stars and planets form.

• Big History weaves expert thinking about the Universe into a coherent story and looks at the entire span of history at different scales. It’s a modern, scientific version of an origin story.

• Big History is the story of humans from the dawn of agriculture to the present.

What are turning points in the history of the Universe when new things and new levels of complexity appear?

• Scales

• Universal truths

• Thresholds of increasing complexity

• Origin stories

How is Big History different from other origin stories?

• Big History bases its story on mythology, ancient narratives, and oral history.

• Big History is a nationalist origin story and doesn’t consider global perspectives.

• Big History focuses on the origin story of humans as the major agents of change.

• Big History is a modern origin story based on scientific information from multiple disciplines.

What is an origin story?

• A theory as to why the Universe is expanding

• An attempt to explain the beginning of humanity and the Universe

• The use of spoken language to pass down a people’s history

• A scientific explanation for how atoms formed

What are Goldilocks Conditions?

• The human ability to create complex, symbolic language.

• The specific and diverse ingredients needed for new complexity to emerge.

• The “just right” conditions that, when combined with the necessary ingredients, can lead to new complexity.

• The ability to look at things from different perspectives of time and space.

What does the Big Bang theory suggest?

• The universe was just there

• The universe is continually expanding

• The Milky way is the only solar system

• The universe started as a point and is moving towards each other

Why is the end of the plasma Universe so important to the creation of greater complexity?

• Energy could no longer be created or destroyed at the end of the plasma Universe.

• At the end of the plasma Universe, 380,000 years after the Big Bang, human existence began.

• It was then that gravity was created.

• The Universe cooled enough to allow for the formation of atoms, the building blocks of everything more complex in the Universe.

Why is the formation of stars an important threshold in Big History?

• Stars rid the Universe of dark matter.

• Stars created the “hot spots” necessary for further complexity

• Stars created cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR).

• Stars exploded during the Big Bang

Which of the following is NOT a Goldilocks Condition for the formation of stars?

• Extremely high temperatures

• Concentrations of hydrogen

• Uniform density of matter

Why is the increasing temperature of matter an important step in the lighting up of stars?

• It allows the star to eject its outer layers of heavy elements

• It allows for reactions that release incredible amounts of energy

• It allows for hydrogen to be converted into uranium

• It allows subatomic particles to come together to form atoms