The 17 Cosmic 'Big Bang Theme Words' That Tell The Entire History Of Everything (And The Glaring Scientific Mistake)

The theme song for *The Big Bang Theory*, officially titled "The History of Everything" by the Barenaked Ladies, is a masterpiece of rapid-fire, chronologically ordered scientific storytelling. Far from being simple background music, the lyrics—the core "big bang theme words"—pack nearly 14 billion years of cosmic and human history into a mere 52 seconds, a feat of lyrical genius that perfectly sets the stage for a show about brilliant scientists. This deep dive, updated for December 2025, explores the key scientific entities mentioned and highlights the song's one major, yet fascinating, scientific inaccuracy.

The song’s writer, Ed Robertson, was tasked with creating a track that encapsulated the entire history of the universe, a challenge he met by weaving complex scientific concepts into catchy, fast-paced poetry. The result is a dense narrative that moves from the universe's origin to the dawn of civilization, providing a topical authority on cosmic history in a pop-culture package. Analyzing these words reveals not just the show's intellectual foundation, but also how quickly scientific consensus can change.

The Chronological Breakdown: 17 Key Big Bang Theme Words Explained

The genius of "The History of Everything" lies in its strict chronological structure. Each line moves forward in time, starting at the beginning of the universe and progressing through cosmic, geological, and biological evolution before reaching human history. The "big bang theme words" below represent the major entities and concepts mentioned, following the song's timeline.

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• Hot Dense State: This is the starting point. The phrase refers to the initial conditions of the universe before the Big Bang expansion began.
• Expansion Started: The Big Bang itself, marking the moment the universe began to rapidly inflate and cool approximately 13.8 billion years ago.
• Earth Began to Cool: Following the formation of the solar system, this refers to the planet transitioning from a molten state to one capable of sustaining life.
• Autotrophs Began to Drool: A phrase describing the first organisms, like cyanobacteria, that could produce their own food (photosynthesis), a critical step in creating an oxygen-rich atmosphere.
• Neanderthals: An early species of human that lived alongside modern humans before becoming extinct.
• Dinosaurs: The dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 165 million years, whose reign ended with a mass extinction event.
• Mammals: The class of animals that rose to prominence after the dinosaur extinction, including humans.
• Chimpanzee: Mentioned to highlight the close evolutionary link between humans and other primates.
• We Built a Wall: A reference to the earliest forms of organized human construction and defense, symbolizing the beginning of complex societies.
• We Built the Pyramids: A specific, iconic example of ancient human engineering, demonstrating advanced civilization in Egypt.
• Agriculture: The development of farming, a revolutionary step that allowed for permanent settlements and the rise of civilization.
• Writing: The invention of symbolic communication, marking the end of prehistory and the beginning of recorded history.
• Mathematics: The formal study of quantity, structure, space, and change, a foundation for all modern science.
• Science: The systematic study of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
• Philosophy: The study of fundamental problems, often preceding and informing scientific inquiry.
• Big Crunch: The song’s controversial ending prediction that the universe will eventually stop expanding and collapse back on itself.
• Freeze: Used as a rhyming word, but it also alludes to the "Big Freeze" or "Heat Death" theory, an alternative and currently more accepted end-of-universe scenario.

The Glaring Scientific Mistake: Big Crunch vs. Accelerated Expansion

The most fascinating element of the "big bang theme words" is the one line that is now considered scientifically inaccurate. The lyrics state: "It's expanding ever outward, but one day / The expansion started slowing down and we will all be in the Big Crunch."

This line firmly embraces the Big Crunch theory, which was a prevailing model for the end of the universe when the song was written. The theory posits that the universe's gravity would eventually overcome the initial expansion force, causing everything to reverse course and collapse back into a single, hot, dense state—a reverse Big Bang.

However, modern cosmology, particularly discoveries made in the late 1990s, established a different reality. Observations of distant supernovae confirmed that the universe's expansion is not slowing down; it is actually accelerating due to a mysterious force known as dark energy.

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This accelerated expansion makes the Big Crunch scenario highly unlikely. Instead, the current prevailing theory suggests a Big Freeze (or Heat Death), where the universe will continue to expand until all matter is so far apart and all energy is so uniformly distributed that no further work or life can be sustained.

Ed Robertson, the songwriter, has acknowledged this scientific update, often pausing during live performances to point out the lyrical inaccuracy. He even joked about rewriting the bridge with new rhyming words like "analyses" or "degrees" instead of "freeze" to reflect the change, but the original version remains a perfect time capsule of late 20th-century cosmology.

Topical Authority and LSI Keywords: The Science Behind the Song

To truly appreciate the depth of the theme song, one must recognize the vast array of scientific and historical entities it covers. The Barenaked Ladies' track, "The History of Everything," is a concise lesson in cosmic history and biological evolution. The inclusion of these big bang theme words grounds the sitcom in the intellectual world of its main characters: Leonard Hofstadter, Sheldon Cooper, Howard Wolowitz, and Rajesh Koothrappali.

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The song functions as a Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) goldmine for the topic of universal history. Entrenched within the lyrics are concepts that establish a strong topical authority on everything from astrophysics to paleontology and archaeology.

Other key entities and LSI keywords naturally appearing in the song’s context include:

• Barenaked Ladies (the band)
• Ed Robertson (the songwriter)
• Dark Energy (the force causing acceleration)
• Photosynthesis (the process of autotrophs)
• Supernovae (used to measure expansion)
• Paleolithic Era (implied by "Neanderthals")
• Mesopotamia (implied by "writing" and "agriculture")
• Evolution of Life
• The Big Freeze / Heat Death (the current theory)
• Cosmology

The theme song is more than just a jingle; it is a rapid-fire cultural artifact. It perfectly blends entertainment with education, prompting millions of viewers to think about the scientific accuracy of the Big Bang Theory theme song lyrics and the grand sweep of time and space. Even with the outdated Big Crunch theory line, the song remains a beloved and highly informative piece of pop culture.