By Alituha Aaron (Software Engineering Student Victoria University)
At the heart of Victoria University, tucked within the quiet halls of the Faculty of Science and Technology, a young Software Engineering student named Alituha Aaron has turned his curiosity toward the cosmos. Amid coding assignments and data structures, he is unlocking secrets that predate humanity—reaching back 13.7 billion years to the origin of the universe itself.
Alituha’s research dives into one of the most ambitious stories ever told: the creation of the earth—and everything before it. His fascination doesn’t begin with planets or life, but with a singularity, a point infinitely dense and hot, where all matter, space, energy, and even time itself were squeezed into something unimaginably small.
From that singularity came a colossal expansion known as the Big Bang—not an explosion, but a rapid ballooning of space. Alituha describes this timeline as unfolding through distinct epochs, categorized first under the Radiation Era.
The Radiation Era: The Universe Takes Form
The first was the Planck epoch, when the universe was so hot that not even particles could exist. At this time, gravity began to split from the unified super force—a force Alituha explains as a cosmic blend of strong nuclear, weak nuclear, electromagnetic, and gravitational forces.
Next was the Grand Unification epoch, where the strong nuclear force broke away. Then came the Inflationary epoch, during which the universe expanded from atomic size to a grapefruit almost instantly—an event crucial in setting up the large-scale structure of the cosmos.
As temperatures cooled, the Electroweak epoch arrived, and the electromagnetic and weak forces parted ways. Still too hot for particles to stabilize, the universe passed through the Quark epoch, until finally, during the Hadron epoch, protons and neutrons could form.
By the Lepton and Nuclear epochs, the universe was calm enough for protons and neutrons to combine into nuclei. For the first time, atoms could exist. The earliest of these? Helium—a simple but profound beginning.
The Matter Era: Building the Cosmos
Aaron explains that as the universe continued to expand and cool, it transitioned into the Matter Era, starting with the Atomic epoch. Electrons were finally able to attach to nuclei, giving birth to neutral atoms—primarily hydrogen, and more helium.
These atoms gathered into enormous clouds that marked the Galactic epoch, where gravity began weaving matter into galaxies. Within those galaxies, nuclear fusion ignited in the hearts of growing stars—ushering in the Stellar epoch.
From these first stars came heavier elements, planets, and ultimately—us.
Proof Written in the Sky
Aaron doesn’t stop at theory. He points to multiple lines of evidence supporting this story:
- Light element abundance, particularly hydrogen and helium, as predicted by Big Bang nucleosynthesis.
- The presence of cosmic background radiation—the afterglow of the Big Bang, accidentally discovered in 1965 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson when they heard a mysterious hiss in their radio antenna.
- The red shift of galaxies, showing the universe is still expanding.
- And the presence of dark energy and dark matter, the invisible scaffolding and fuel driving cosmic evolution.
For Aaron, this isn’t just abstract science. It’s a humbling reminder of how far we’ve come—from an infinitesimal point of heat and energy to a planet teeming with conscious beings, capable of questioning their origins.
