Study Reveals New Details On What Happened In the First Microsecond of Big Bang (phys.org) 109
Researchers from University of Copenhagen have investigated what happened to a specific kind of plasma -- the first matter ever to be present -- during the first microsecond of Big Bang. Their findings provide a piece of the puzzle to the evolution of the universe, as we know it today. Phys.org reports: "We have studied a substance called quark-gluon plasma that was the only matter, which existed during the first microsecond of Big Bang. Our results tell us a unique story of how the plasma evolved in the early stage of the universe," explains You Zhou, associate professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen. "First, the plasma that consisted of quarks and gluons was separated by the hot expansion of the universe. Then the pieces of quark reformed into so-called hadrons. A hadron with three quarks makes a proton, which is part of atomic cores. These cores are the building blocks that constitutes Earth, ourselves and the universe that surrounds us," he adds.
The quark-gluon plasma (QGP) was present in the first 0.000001 second of Big Bang, and thereafter, it disappeared due to the expansion. But by using the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, researchers were able to recreate this, the first matter in history, and trace back what happened to it. "In addition to using the Large Hadron Collider, the researchers also developed an algorithm that is able to analyze the collective expansion of more produced particles at once than ever possible before. Their results show that the QGP used to be a fluent liquid form and that it distinguishes itself from other matter by constantly changing its shape over time.
"For a long time, researchers thought that the plasma was a form of gas, but our analysis confirm the latest milestone measurement, where the Hadron Collider showed that QGP was fluent and had a smooth soft texture like water. The new details we provide show that the plasma has changed its shape over time, which is quite surprising and different from any other matter we know and what we would have expected," says You Zhou. Even though this might seem like a small detail, it brings physicists one step closer to solving the puzzle of the Big Bang and how the universe developed in the first microsecond, he elaborates. The study has been published in the journal Physics Letters B.
The quark-gluon plasma (QGP) was present in the first 0.000001 second of Big Bang, and thereafter, it disappeared due to the expansion. But by using the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, researchers were able to recreate this, the first matter in history, and trace back what happened to it. "In addition to using the Large Hadron Collider, the researchers also developed an algorithm that is able to analyze the collective expansion of more produced particles at once than ever possible before. Their results show that the QGP used to be a fluent liquid form and that it distinguishes itself from other matter by constantly changing its shape over time.
"For a long time, researchers thought that the plasma was a form of gas, but our analysis confirm the latest milestone measurement, where the Hadron Collider showed that QGP was fluent and had a smooth soft texture like water. The new details we provide show that the plasma has changed its shape over time, which is quite surprising and different from any other matter we know and what we would have expected," says You Zhou. Even though this might seem like a small detail, it brings physicists one step closer to solving the puzzle of the Big Bang and how the universe developed in the first microsecond, he elaborates. The study has been published in the journal Physics Letters B.
Who cares about the big bang (Score:3, Insightful)
What came before the Big Bang is what interests me
Re: Who cares about the big bang (Score:5, Informative)
According to some theories, some remains of a pre-big-bang state may have remained in the form of certain irregularities in the matter in the universe. Studying the big bang in ever greater detail and more accurate models can put bounds on such processes. By studying the distribution of mass and background radiation in the observable universe and comparing them to these statistical bounds we can discard or validate such theories.
So yes, this can be relevant to whatever might have been before the big bang.
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Not convinced (Score:2)
Chaos theory means we can't predict the weather with any great accuracy more than a few days ahead. The same affect would occur if you tried to work backwards from todays weather and predict last weeks. Ditto trying to work backwards from todays conditions and trying to work out what things were like at the Big Bang. Yes, not exact analogy but given how complex the evolution of a universe must be , I would say a fair one.
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Chaos theory applies in some special circumstances but not in most things (for example, getting the Cassini spacecraft to Saturn within a meter of where it was planned after years in space and multiple slingshot moves). In general, all the hard work in understanding any process lies in figuring out what the error bars are. The error bars are largish in weather. They're really under control in astrodynamics. Weirdly enough, the error bars are surprisingly small in cosmology. How do we know? Stressing a
Re:Who cares about the big bang (Score:4, Interesting)
The question is, how do you define 'before' when, as least as far as **I** have read, that the phenomenon we call 'time' did not exist prior to whatever destabilized the 'monobloc'.
But that gets into concepts like "quantum foam", and similar things from the extremely bleeding edge of theoretical astrophysics. . .
Re:Who cares about the big bang (Score:4, Insightful)
That only makes sense if time is defined relative to something (matter/energy/entropy) inside our current universe. But if there is a "before the big bang", then there is also an alternate "time" that governs that pre-universe universe that we just don't have the scope to reference.
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That only makes sense if time is defined relative to something (matter/energy/entropy) inside our current universe. But if there is a "before the big bang", then there is also an alternate "time" that governs that pre-universe universe that we just don't have the scope to reference.
I would surmise that there is a time-like element to the underlying quantum foam. But it would be totally non-connected to our concept of time.
And my understanding of astrophysics at that level is that of an informed layman. I suspect the only way to discuss it with any degree of accuracy would require advanced and somewhat obscure mathematics. . . and would still only be theory: how do you prove anything outside our Universe ?
Re: Who cares about the big bang (Score:2)
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Thank you, Elon Musk (grin)
Time is simply events happening (Score:3)
If there is no time events can't happen and "whatever destabilised" couldn't happen either. Ergo time in some form must have existed.
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You do not need "time" for "before". You just need causality.
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Re: Who cares about the big bang (Score:1)
Pkunzip Universe.zip
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Re: Who cares about the big bang (Score:1)
And a hipster one too...
Re: Who cares about the big bang (Score:1)
Re:Who cares about the big bang (Score:4, Funny)
A universe with an advanced civilization researching to understand their own big bang. The last words spoken before our big bang were 'let's see what happens when we do *this*'.
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What's the last thing a redneck says before he dies?
"Hey ya'll, watch this!"
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Clearly it's Large Hadron Colliders all the way down.
Re:Who cares about the big bang (Score:4, Insightful)
We have no means of making observations from that period, so there is no way to present a scientific answer.
As I understand (please jump in and correct me if I am wrong (as if anyone needed an invitation)), our knowledge of the Big Bang is entirely a result of inference from its very distant after-effects. We observe things like background radiation, the expansion of all observable matter, etc., build mathematical models that describe these observations, and then run them in reverse. Eventually, that shows us a "bug crunch" (since it is running in reverse). So that is how we know everything we know about the big bang.
But none of us were there. Nobody observed any of this. No direct measurements were made. And there is no way to go back and do this. So we may be surprisingly wrong on many of the particulars. That doesn't mean the model is worthless; it is still the best model we can make that is consistent with all the observations we CAN make. So it is still good. But there isn't any reason to expect that it should be perfect, and there are plenty of reasons to expect that we will adjust it further as new information becomes available.
But anyway, this means that "I don't know" is a perfectly reasonable answer to give about any sort of precondition of the big bang. Our math doesn't tell us, and we have no way to observe anything that would tell us, so we can't know, so we don't know.
And popular religious teachers don't know either. They just make stuff up. That is a much worse way to learn stuff about the past.
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We have no means of making observations from that period, so there is no way to present a scientific answer.
Not quite true. The speed of light is slow enough, that when we're looking at the cosmic microwave background, we are directly observing what happened in the universe when it was a few hundred thousand years old, and had just cooled off to about 3000K, electrons could stick to protons, and the universe became transparent.
So, keep in mind that any astronomy is really a time machine, because light is so pokey.
Also keep in mind that the definition of "scientific answer" is "can we figure it out with the scien
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But none of us were there.
Generalize much? There are some properly old people around here, like, boomers and stuff.
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Pretty sure it's just a call to malloc().
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As Hawking said:
asking "what came before the Big Bang?"
is like asking "what is north of the North Pole?'.
In other words, it's a meaningless question.
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keep changing our minds
No.
existence
No.
non-existence
No.
amount of dark matter in the center of our galaxy
No.
extensive knowledge of the nature of matter in the first 0.000001 second
No.
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No we don't keep changing our minds. We build new and at sometimes contradictory theories that our observations of nature have not yet been able to disambiguate. Go back to school and get an education.
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We continue to modify and improve our model as more information becomes available. Big distinction.
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The first swaering (Score:2)
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FFS, Carl, I said "Not that button!"
"Yeah. My bad."
I try not to be pedantic... (Score:1)
...I really do.
"...so-called hadrons,."
Why are they phrasing it like that? There isn't any doubt about it. That's what they're called. Not "so-called", "called". If I referred to the "so-called" holocaust, most people except so-called republicans would be upset.
Like water (Score:2)
A Question on the QGP (Score:2)
The OP discusses the fact that the QGP pre-dates the existence of hadrons (e.g. protons in Hydrogen nuclei) and that the QGP existed for the briefest interval of time before the early universe cooled sufficient to permit this to happen. OK. With you so far.
But the Standard Model tells us that Quarks are (if I get this right), fundamental particles of matt
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And what about leptons (e.g. electrons)? They're currently thought to be fundamental particles in their own right and not composed of quarks, so if the very early universe consisted of a quark-gluon plasma, where did the leptons come from?
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I think those particles existed, but they would have been constantly colliding with the quarks and gluons, so their "normal" behaviours would have been swamped. As a loose analogy consider any opaque solid matter. Photons probably exist in there, but they travel almost no distance before they hit an atom and they (mostly) carry much less energy than the interactions between atoms, so the properties of the matter are determined by the atoms,
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So does this mean that the other force carrying particles, e.g. the W and Z bosons [weak nuclear force], photons [electromagnetic force], did not exist during the QGP phase of the early universe?
By the time of the QGP, the temperature was too low to provide the needed E to make the mc^2 needed to create that (competitively heavy) W and Z bosons. Earlier, before about 10^-12 seconds, the ambient energy was large enough to make W's and Z's willy-nilly, at which point since they're as easy to make as photons, the electric and the weak fore behaved the same way. So, by the time of the QGP, the W's and Z's weren't much more common than they are today. (by the way: since photons are massless, they're
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And I'm very sorry to have to ask a follow-up, clarifying question, but in your reply, you say, "By the time of the QGP, the temperature was too low to provide the needed E to make the mc^2 needed to create that (competitively heavy) W and Z bosons.".
I think I might be struggling with this bit. Are you saying that all of the W and Z bosons in our universe therefore had to be created before the appearance of the QGP? That by the time the universe created to the point where the QGP emerged, th
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Bosons come and go. Well, true for all matter really: for example, you can make an electron/positron pair today out of energy. It's certainly happening at some rate in the room your sitting in as cosmic rays rip by [nobelprize.org], and each particle will then wander around the room for a bit till it encounters its anti-particle and turns back into energy. Which will be pretty quick for the positron (lots of electrons to trip over) but a long time for the electron (not so many positrons to meet).
Likewise, the W and Z's.
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I know what happened just before... (Score:1)
The late Dr. Zerf Blip went to simulate the big bang, but instead triggered a new one.
Great (Score:2)
The Big Bang never happened .. (Score:1)
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god is a myth
the bible is fiction
religion is bullshit
Re:I know what happened. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I know what happened. (Score:5, Funny)
God is love, and if you disagree then you're going to burn in hell for eternity because that's what love is, letting your minions burn for eternity.
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To me being religious is stupid and therefore over 84% of the world population is stupid, we're so fucked.
Re:I know what happened. (Score:5, Insightful)
MrL0G1C, please recognize that everyone, including you, was born stupid. You had the advantage of a superior education that (probably, I am guessing here) included a solid emphasis in critical thinking, science, and maybe even contemporary philosophy. So, you have a pretty good handle on why scientific inquiry is superior to religious methods of determining truth.
But most of the world has not had such an education. Instead, they received religious indoctrination. That was done to them when they were young and impressionable, and it gets in deep! It also has interesting self-preserving elements like "it is morally virtuous to hold fast to your religious beliefs even when evidence is presented to the contrary" and "you are a hero if you can convince others to believe, because you save them from a terrible fate" and "if YOU stop believing, regardless of the reason, YOU suffer a terrible fate!" and so on.
So, the cure to religious thinking is a solid education, and those who have not had this are very unlikely to spontaneously "wake up" on their own, even if they are otherwise very intelligent people (or at least people with a high potential for intelligence).
My only real point is that an ounce of compassion for the less fortunate may be warranted, here.
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That doesn't explain Americans who generally get a good education. I think the problem is that the majority of people prefer to let other people do their thinking for them, they're happy to not question their chosen leaders even when they spout endless drivel like Trump did.
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I beg to differ on the "Americans generally get a good education" front. Public schools, by and large, don't emphasize critical thinking, and the level of scientific education they provide is very "surface level." In religious communities, many of the public school teachers would also be religious and that bias would creep out as well.
And even inasmuch as public schools DO teach things like evolution and science, by the time students are learning this they have already been well-indoctrinated against it,
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I guess you are an American?
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That doesn't explain Americans who generally get a good education.
Americans largely don't get a good education.
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That is a shallow doctrinal device intended to keep God's hands clean by blaming the victim.
If God was actually all-powerful, then there would be no logical reason why anyone at all would suffer in his presence, regardless of that person's moral or spiritual orientation. God could simply use his divine power to make his presence painless to everyone. But, according to this doctrine, God does not.
And it gets worse, because once you have died and entered into God's fire, you are stuck there (though I believ
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Ok, that doesn't make sense.
One's preferences rarely have anything to do with free will. Free will gives us the ability to actually act upon our preferences, but not to change them. For example, someone who hates the taste of asparagus will never, no matter how strong their will is, ever be able to "choose" to like the taste of asparagus.
But, ignoring that....
Are you seriously suggesting that human souls, post mortem, sit there in nightmarish agony full knowing that the only reason they are feeling that a
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How dare you portray Bezos that way!
Re: I know what happened. (Score:3)
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It's not even clear that the ancients considered the creation myths to be literal. At least we can say that by the time writing existed, people were puzzled by the various different creation myths that seemed to contradict each other.
Re: I know what happened. (Score:1)
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Re:I know what happened. (Score:5, Funny)
And then God said "Let there be ConEd*. . . .and the lights went out. . ." (grin)
(* =$foo of whatever your local utility is. . . .)
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He said that in just a microsecond? He must talk really fast!
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And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. Genesis 1:3
Genesis 1-3 are false according to everything we know about how stars and planets are formed.
1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
We know for a fact that the stars form first and therefore light came before the formation of planetary objects or anything that might exist on them, l
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I'm not religious by any means, but if you're going to try to make any sense of the book of Genesis from a scientific standpoint, you should probably interpret at least some of the words metaphorically. Keep in mind it was written for ancient-era people who had no concept of interstellar space.
For example:
1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Heaven = a spiritual plane
Earth = the material plane - matter and energy
1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the fac
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In the beginning there was nothing, and God said "Let there be light"...
And there was still nothing- except you could see it.
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1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Heaven = a spiritual plane
Earth = the material plane - matter and energy
I really don't think you read the bible. If you do, Heaven is clearly a physical place above the earth.
Jesus and Mary ascended physically into Heaven, and on Judgement day, the dead will rise from their graves, their physical form restored on Earth.
Early Christians believed the Kingdom of God was coming to Earth. Only later did the idea develop of the dead passing immediately to Heaven.
Old testament has no afterlife for mankind - heaven is the domain of God and his armies.
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No, I didn't read the bible. So that's interesting to know.
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On second thought, what you describe seems to again stem from a fairly literal interpretation. You could of course try to analyze them metaphorically as well.
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You could of course try to analyze them metaphorically as well.
Of course that is what modern Christians do. But the early Christians believed it quite literally.
It would seem unlikely that the authors were leaving a hidden metaphor for future generations to discover, especially as they believed the end was nigh, and Jesus would return to earth in their lifetimes.
Re: I know what happened. (Score:1)
Re: I know what happened. (Score:1)
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1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Heaven = a spiritual plane Earth = the material plane - matter and energy
I really don't think you read the bible. If you do, Heaven is clearly a physical place above the earth.
Heaven is a place on Earth.
Source: Belinda Carlisle
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still doesn't make any sense. metaphors won't help any scientific interpretation of totally a-scientific information.
indeed metaphors were a way for ancients humans to explain away mysteries and to build a narrative about the world, but their only scientific value is as record and example of primitive cultures and thinking in the context of cultural evolution, not of actual physical theory.
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And a talking snake told Eve to eat an apple. Those were the days!
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*Serpent.
After that, his legs were taken in punishment: "on thy belly thou shalt crawl". Though as God is supposed to be omnipotent and omniscient, and everything is according to His Plan (TM), that means he set the serpent up for the fall and then took his legs for doing exactly what he wanted him to do. Also known as a dick move. As is giving free will and then kicking those who exercise it out of Paradise.
Re:I know what happened. (Score:4, Insightful)
I personally think that the early chapters of the book of Genesis were intended, by their author, as metaphor. I think that the inclination to interpret them literally came later, after it became a central document in a popular religion. The bigger the group of interpreters, the more likely that subtle or intellectually-sophisticated messages will be misinterpreted. However, precisely because such a group is big, this misinterpretation then becomes the de-facto standard interpretation.
The story seems very obviously rich in symbolism to me, though. The whole "crawling on one's belly and eat dust" represents a life spent in the vain pursuit of creature comforts (the belly is where the stomach is, and also right next to the sexual organs, and "dust" is a very obvious symbol for things lacking in value or substance).
Similarly, the central drama is clearly a representation of an intellectual "birthing process." The fruit represents a cognitive maturation process where one grows beyond the childlike innocence of an animalistic, amoral existence into one that is more enlightened, but also more beset with problems (since now you have "good and evil" to stress over when choosing actions). And the expulsion from the garden represents the advancement from the sheltered life of childhood into the responsibly-laden life of adulthood.
There is plenty more here, of course. Religious fanatics don't take this interpretation so they aren't going to be interested. But for the rest of us, I think it is an interesting book that is worth reading for cultural enrichment and intellectual engagement in the contemplation of these metaphors and learning what they might tell us about our ancestors and ourselves.
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Certainly the most popular work ever. It's not all fictional. There's records showing some of the people in the work lived, documents other than the Christian Bible. The rest is fables meant to give moral guidance, like a child's bedtime story. Just because it is fiction does not mean it lacks truth.
My original post was meant to be an offhanded remark, something of a joke. I didn't expect to kick off some big discussion.
Calm down everyone. Don't be so wound up over things.
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Just a reminder that around 50% of scientists in the field don't think the big bang happened. Science has been stating hypothesis as fact for the last couple centuries and then embarrassing itself by being proven wrong over and over and over.
Whereas you, a non scientist, can't be embarrassed. No matter how many times you're proven wrong.
It only makes your faith stronger.