How did round planets form from the explosion of the Big Bang?

Hi Aptera, welcome to EvCforum! As others have mentioned, you're actually talking about cosmology here. The Theory of Evolution is a model that explains the observed diversity of life as the result of cumulative random mutations guided by natural selection. It doesn't have anything to do with how planets form, or the Big Bang.You have the basics right, but you're just a little off in the details, and they're somewhat important.Big Bang cosmology observes that the Universe is currently expanding, and extrapolates that this means that as you go backwards in time, the Universe itself was smaller. Since mass/energy must be conserved, a smaller amount of space with the same amount of "stuff" in it means that the Universe must also have been hotter and more dense as you go back as well. Various observations, including the redshift of distant objects, the Cosmic Microwave Background, etc. all fit with this model.The Big Bang is not an explosion of any sort. The term "Big Bang" was actually coined by an opponent of the model (who was later convinced as additional evidence rolled in). The term was simply catchy enough that it stuck, despite the inaccurate connotations it conveys.The Big Bang is still happening today - it is, quite simply, the expansion of space itself. If you imagine three-dimensional space as the two-dimensional surface of a balloon, the balloon is expanding. Any two points on the surface of the ballon (any two points in our three-dimensional space) are gradually becoming more distant as the amount of space between them literally expands. The farther away the two points are, the more space is between them and thus the more pronounced the expansion. That's an incredibly difficult question to answer. You're talking about the actual origin of the Universe, which is a concept that includes time, and therefore our everyday understanding of causality isn't going to work correctly. The basic fact is that we don't know for sure. The Universe could have been created by a deity; it could simply exist, with no cause; it could have been created from some natural phenomenon that we aren't currently aware of.We do know a few things, however:1) Mass/energy is always conserved, though you can exchange one for the other (that's what Einstein's "E=MC^2" deal was about)
2) This means that, for as long as the Universe has existed, the same total of mass/energy has existed.
3) The three spacial dimensions of length, width, and height are expanding, and this seems to be a basic property of space.If Cavediver or Son Goku stop by, pay close attention to their responses. They are actual physicists in real life (Cavediver was once upon a time a physics professor), and both are very good at translating extremely complex, math-heavy physics theories into normal English. It didn't. The Big Bang was not an explosion. The Big Bang did not involve a magic "material." Space itself, over the entire existence of time, has expanded. Time simply has a certain value at which the entire Unvierse, by extrapolating the expansion abckwards, would have existed as a single dimensionless point that still contained the total mass/energy the Unvierse still contains today. The Unvierse did not exist as this single point for any amount of time - literally since the very first moment, it has been expanding. The concept of "before" the expansion has as much meaning as asking what is located farther North than the North Pole - it requires a coordinate that precedes the minimum value of the number set, like asking what comes before 0" on a ruler. Matter didn;t form immediately in the Big Bang, and planets came much later.During the first moments, the Universe was simply too small; the density of its mass/energy made it too hot for even matter to form. Gradually as space expanded, the Unvierse cooled down and the precursors of matter finally started to form. Initially, there wasn't much more than Hydrogen - but gravity caused the Hydrogen to attract itself until the first stars were formed. Stars, btw, are also spherical - this is because of gravity, which equally attracts all parts of the body towards its center of mass. I'm sure you've seen videos of astronauts on the space shuttle or in the ISS drinking water - note that the water drops form into what are basically spheres. At such a small scale it's not really being caused by gravity, but the effect is analogous.Stars work via nuclear fusion. They fuse 2 Hydrogen atoms into 1 Helium atom, and so on. All of the heavy elements in the Universe are the result of stellar fusion, including every atom in your body. As the stars consumed their fuel, they eventually died in novas and supernovae, which spread these heavy elements around.Gradually, clouds of Hydrogen and the remnants of these great stellar explosions congregated through gravitational self-attraction, and began to form new stellar nebulae - clouds of gas and dust where stars are born. Our Sun was one such star. The planets that orbit it are the remnants of that nebula - gas and dust that were located in stable orbits and accumulated significant amounts of mass. Our planets (and the Sun itself) are roughly spherical because of gravity - every part of the entire body is equally atracted towards the center of mass.Does that clear anything up for you?

Finite but unbounded. It's not possible to have an expanding Universe if the Universe is infinite - the concept of relative size requires discrete quantities.Just think like the surface of a sphere. The topology isn't quite right, but you can see how there are only so many square meters of space, but there is no boundary.

Completely and totally incorrect.Mass is not a measurement of matter. Matter is that which has mass and takes up space; energy has mass but does not take up space. Most of your mass, in fact, is binding energy. Your concept of mass, matter, and energy is that of a basic high school student - in other words, woefully inaccurate.Read more of what cavediver has been saying, and begin with the fact that what you've been taught so far is the most basic and generalized explanation, and it strikes very far from the mark when dealing with accurate descriptions of modern physics.

There's your problem. Chemistry is not physics - especially not the advanced physics cavediver is talking about. Incorrect. Mass is not volume. A given mass, in fact, can fill varied amounts of volume - kilogram of feathers and a kilogram of gold will take up very different amounts of volume. "Weight" is a measurement of gravity's effect on a given amount of mass. The reason mass is more accurate is because the same amount of mass will have different weights on Earth or on the moon. This still says nothign about the volume of a given mass. Correct. Because mass is not a measurement of volume. And I'm positive that your chemistry teacher didn;t teach you that.Look at what cavediver is saying. Mass is a measurement of an amount of energy in spacetime. The mass of matter is comprised of the rest mass and binding energy of the quarks that comprise its subatomic particles (we're beyond chemistry already - atoms are made of subatomic particles, which are themselves made of quarks). The binding energy of the quarks vastly exceeds their rest mass. The vast majority of your mass is nothing but binding energy.At no point are we discussing volume. Volume is simply an amount of space. Alone, it has nothing to do with mass. Density is the amount of mass contained in a given volume.

All matter posesses the capacity to do work. Matter/antimatter interaction should be the only example you need.Pay less attention to your chemistry textbooks, and more attention to cavediver, and actual theoretical physicist and physics professor.Matter, energy, even the dimensions of space and time are the result of varied quantum fields.Matter is different from energy in our macroscale comprehension primarily because matter takes up space, while energy does not. Both have the property identified as "mass."Most of the mass (nearly all of it, in fact) of matter is binding energy - the energy that holds together the quarks that make up the protons and neutrons, that holds the neutrons and protons in the atomic nucleus together, the chemical bonds that hold atoms together in molecules, etc. Binding energy is potential energy in much the same way a rock held up high has potential energy.Most of human society runs off of chemical energy - we break chemical bonds in order to utilize the binding energy that is then released, much like dropping a rock that was previously held. This is what we're doing when we digest food, when we burn oil/gasoline/coal, etc.We also use nuclear energy - through fission we break some of the binding energy of the fissile material, in effect using the potential binding energy of the atomic nuclei to perform work. This slightly reduces the mass of the fissile material, as that mass came from the binding energy that has now been repurposed. This happens naturally in radioactive decay, as unstable atoms decay into lower-energy, more stable states. Protons, neutrons, and electrons are matter. They simply are not atoms. They obey the Exclusion principle, and thus take up space (ie, two neutrons cannot occupy the same space). Cavediver would say they have 1/2 spin, as opposed to integer spin. They are Bosons. Common usage of a term is inaccurate when applied to the scientific usage of the same term. Potential energy is still energy. A rock held above your head has a greater energy content than a rock at your feet.Remember the conservation of mass and energy? you can convert both, but create or destroy neither. When you pick up a rock and lift it over your head, you are using energy. Some of it becomes heat, but some is used as mechanical energy to lift the rock. That energy does not disappear - it is "contained" by the rock. When you release the rock, the energy is "released" as mechanical motion, which eventually becomes heat after it hits the ground."Binding energy" is similar to a rock held up high. It's potential energy - and that means it is energy, it has mass, and it can be used to perform work under the correct conditions (which means only that you need to be able to lower the energy state and increase entropy; you can use a waterfall for power generation by using the energy of the water as it falls from a higher energy state into a lower, but you cannot use a lake for the same purpose in the same way regardless of how much potential energy the water may have).Quite literally Sasuke, if binding energy were not energy, if the "breakdown of matter"in radioactive decay were not a form of work, then nuclear power would not work. Yet it does. All of this, however, is our perception of what's going on at the macroscale. At the level of quantum physics, things are far less intuitive. Both matter and energy are excitations in quantum fields. At that point, it becomes difficult (impossible?) to describe what's going on in laymans terms. I won't even pretend to understand more than the barest concepts at this level, and I'll leave explaining it up to cavediver and Son Goku.

Incorrect. If your concept were accurate, it would be impossible to use a waterfal to perform work, as both the water at the higher and lower elevations are "falling towards the Earth."The ability to perform work is all about differences in energy states. Work is performed when a higher energy state is moved to a lower energy state; when entropy is increased.When you drop a rock, it moves from a (literally) higher energy state to a lower energy state. Entropy increases, and work is performed.When an electron moves to a lower energy state within an atop, it typically releases a photon.Radioactive decay is the process by which unstable elements achieve a lower, more stable energy state.A battery stores chemical energy, and its energy state is lowered as that chemical energy is lowered to perform work with electronic devices.It's all the same thing, in different forms.The fact that the amount of energy involved in a falling rock is inconsequential compared to the motion of the Earth around the Sun, or the Sun's orbit around our galactic center, or our galaxy's movement in our galactic cluster, etc is irrelevant - the energy state is still different between a rock on the ground and a rock held a meter above the ground.