Academic Paper from the year 2017 in the subject Physics - Other, grade: 1, language: English, abstract: The surface of last scattering is regarded as a consequence of the Big Bang description of the origin of the observable universe. It is envisaged as a spherical surface from which all of the CMB photons emanate and centred on the Earth. Because of the opacity of the universe prior to the formation of this surface this taken to be the farthest redshift that may be observed. The discovery of the cosmic jerk was made, independently, by groups led by Schmidt and Perlmutter; the effect is shown clearly in their data as presented by Krauss, p85, [3]. It was found that approximately five billion years bp the expansion of the universe appeared to change suddenly from a state of deceleration to one of acceleration and is attributed to the entity called dark energy. It is not known whether this acceleration will persist into the indefinite future. Indeed, the future of the universe is a subject of much discussion, not to say, controversy. In this work the vacuum of the universe is modelled as a very large set of conjugate pairs of bi-modal, frequency-quantised, simple quantum harmonic oscillators, one having positive energy, the other, negative energy. Further, each pair of oscillators occupies a cubical enclosure of side equal to the wavelength corresponding to their current frequency, and related through the relationship, l=c. The mode of action of the harmonic oscillators is explained in detail and is shown to exist in two modes, the sterile mode and the free vacuon mode, the former being the overwhelmingly-dominant state of the universe. According to the model developed here the universe, prior to inception was cold, dark and empty and had existed in this state into the indefinite past. Inception was induced by a quantum fluctuation casting the universe into a free vacuon mode and the baryonic and dark matters were formed cold during this phase. The light elements, which are taken to be evidence of a Big Bang are shown to be formed later by an isolated nuclear fusion event occurring during a free vacuon mode. The so-called surface of last scattering is also generated by the heating of mass during a free vacuon mode. The cosmic jerk is attributed to heating during a free vacuon mode and the CMB is the attenuated radiation from this event, the radiation from the nuclear fusion event and surface of last scattering being attenuated to below the level of detectability at the present time.