title: The Big Bang as scientific fact.
abstract: In the year 1900, humanity had barely a notion of our place on the cosmic stage, and no inkling at all of how we got here. The one hundred short years of the twentieth century sufficed to unravel 14 billion years of cosmic history and how those grand events, after 9 billions of years or so, set the stage for the birth of our own home, the Solar System. The key events in this history are not hard to comprehend; they can be sketched in a few brief pages. This precious knowledge is part of our shared heritage as human beings and is fundamental to the future prospects of our species. Without it, we are ignorant of the powerful forces that have shaped our past and that will shape our destiny in the future. Read here the cosmic history of humanity, beginning with the Big Bang.
authors.affiliation: Department of of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California-Santa Cruz, 95064, USA. faber@ucolick.org
authors.forename: S M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Faber
mesh_terms: D005118:Extraterrestrial Environment; D006801:Humans; D055585:Physical Phenomena; D010825:Physics