Anyone familiar with the Big Bang Theory? Question about first 180 seconds

[웃 910]

If nothing can travel faster than the speed of light (186,000 miles a second).

Then how come they say 90, or was it 98 or 99% of the universe as we know it today was created in the first 3 minutes (180 seconds).

That would mean you times 186,000 miles * 180 seconds to get the distance from one end to the other (I know it is not a square, it bends)..

That would make it 33,480,000 miles across which we know is absurd. 3 minutes traveling at the speed of light doesn't even get you halfway to our sun (93 million miles)!

It'd take 100,000 years just to go from one end of our galaxy to the other.

How could they say such a thing about the whole universe being created by expansion in 3 minutes flat?

[luckytxn 2,265]

You can google these perplexing questions and get a lot of info. Here is what contemporary scientific thought is what happened from the start to the first few minutes. Of course there always new ideas that change this model somewhat.

The earliest phases of the Big Bang are subject to much speculation. In the most common models, the Universe was filled homogeneously and isotropically with an incredibly high energy density, hugetemperatures and pressures, and was very rapidly expanding and cooling. Approximately 10⁻³⁷ seconds into the expansion, a phase transition caused a cosmic inflation, during which the Universe grewexponentially.^[36] After inflation stopped, the Universe consisted of a quark–gluon plasma, as well as all other elementary particles.^[37] Temperatures were so high that the random motions of particles were atrelativistic speeds, and particle–antiparticle pairs of all kinds were being continuously created and destroyed in collisions. At some point an unknown reaction called baryogenesis violated the conservation of baryon number, leading to a very small excess of quarks and leptons over antiquarks and antileptons—of the order of one part in 30 million. This resulted in the predominance of matter over antimatter in the present Universe.^[38]

The Universe continued to grow in size and fall in temperature, hence the typical energy of each particle was decreasing. Symmetry breaking phase transitions put the fundamental forces of physics and the parameters of elementary particles into their present form.^[39] After about 10⁻¹¹ seconds, the picture becomes less speculative, since particle energies drop to values that can be attained in particle physicsexperiments. At about 10⁻⁶ seconds, quarks and gluons combined to form baryons such as protons and neutrons. The small excess of quarks over antiquarks led to a small excess of baryons over antibaryons. The temperature was now no longer high enough to create new proton–antiproton pairs (similarly for neutrons–antineutrons), so a mass annihilation immediately followed, leaving just one in 10¹⁰ of the original protons and neutrons, and none of their antiparticles. A similar process happened at about 1 second for electrons and positrons. After these annihilations, the remaining protons, neutrons and electrons were no longer moving relativistically and the energy density of the Universe was dominated by photons (with a minor contribution from neutrinos).

A few minutes into the expansion, when the temperature was about a billion (one thousand million; 10⁹; SI prefix giga-) kelvin and the density was about that of air, neutrons combined with protons to form the Universe's deuterium and helium nuclei in a process called Big Bang nucleosynthesis.^[40] Most protons remained uncombined as hydrogen nuclei. As the Universe cooled, the rest mass energy density of matter came to gravitationally dominate that of the photon radiation. After about 379,000 years the electrons and nuclei combined into atoms (mostly hydrogen); hence the radiation decoupled from matter and continued through space largely unimpeded. This relic radiation is known as the cosmic microwave background radiation.^[41]

[scandal 951]

I was waiting for all the knowledgeable armchair scientists on this forum to jump in and impart their wisdom, but alas, they know as much about cosmology as they do about climate science or evolutionary biology. Which is not much, and mostly wrong.

Anyway, to your questions Nathan:

I think you are confusing two different (but related) concepts:

- the space/volume occupied by the universe

- the matter and energy within the universe

What was created within the first seconds of the universe was all the matter+energy.

At that time the volume of the universe was relatively small, as you note, and confined to the expansionary rate of c.

A few things to note:

- special relativity asserts the basic equivalence of matter and energy. They are convertible between each other.

- general relativity asserts the relationship of space/time to the gravitational force exerted by matter. As a universe populated by matter forms, the shape and dimension of that containing universe is itself warped by the gravity of the created matter.

- the basic conservation principles hold true: conservation of mass, of energy, of momentum, of angular momentum.

What does this all mean?

It means that at the Big Bang, there was a singularity. A single mathematical point, the origin of creation. There was no "before" , there was no "time" "prior" to that. There was no space. At that singularity, physics with all its conservation laws came into being. If you want to search for an ultimate Creator - he would have to have decided that was the point, and those would be the rules, by which the Universe would forever more play.

At that point, the explosion. The creation of matter and energy. Wait ... you say... what about conservation? How can you create matter and energy from nothing? The answer - in equal pairs of matter/anti matter. Once you have matter, convert it to energy (photons). Once you have energy, convert it back to matter in the form of electron/positron pairs (same mass, opposite charge) to create elementary particles, then protons/neutrons, then hydrogen atoms, then higher atoms . All these particles are now whizzing around, and of course we need momentum conservation. Every time a matter particle is fired off along one vector, its corresponding antimatter particle goes just the opposite way.

In short, within those ~180 seconds you quote, we went from nothing at all to virtually all the matter and energy there would ever be in the universe, flipping back and forth between matter and energy states. And all of it in a super-compressed dense plasma ball of miniscule proportions. And the shape of that ball warped by the gravitational forces within.

Now, the rest of the (boring?) universe expansion occurs, over the next ~14 billion years till now .... All that matter and energy radiates outward in all directions, and continues racing to this very day and beyond at speeds approaching c. The echoes we see of distant quasars are the telltale traces of that big bang so long ago.

In very crude laymans terms...

Imagine a child's balloon, uninflated and limp. That's the big-bang state. Imagine putting into that balloon a finite quantity of a dense substance (e.g. water) such that it 'plumps' up but doesn't inflate. Squeeze that balloon with your fingers so that it 'squishes'. That's the 3-minute mark with the water inside representing the total mass/energy of the created system, and the squished balloon representing the warped geometry of space/time. Now pucker up and inflate the balloon. Keep blowing forever more (assume an elastic balloon that won't pop, but retains imprints of its initial warped shape). That's the expanding universe, going on and on... And finally imagine the water inside the balloon 'clumping' up, into mists and droplets and drops, all roughly evenly interspersed within the volume of the balloon. That's dust clouds, stellar formation, nebula, galaxies, and all the dark matter in between.

The above picture is inexact and wrong on many levels, but it may help you to picture these key aspects of cosmology.

I hope that helps.

Hawking's books are good for this stuff, of course.

I did my 4th year Honors project on a numerical solution to the Robertson-Walker metric. That was 1986, quite a few eons ago. The above explanation dates back to my recollected (fuzzy) knowledge of the physics I learned then. Buyer beware.

[skiptex 225]

This Big Theory Rocks!!

I don't know who THEY are.. but when i find THEM.. i am going to POP THEM IN THE MOUTH!!

[scandal 951]

Nicely done, Txn!

Good post.

You can google these perplexing questions and get a lot of info. Here is what contemporary scientific thought is what happened from the start to the first few minutes. Of course there always new ideas that change this model somewhat.

The earliest phases of the Big Bang are subject to much speculation. In the most common models, the Universe was filled homogeneously and isotropically with an incredibly high energy density, hugetemperatures and pressures, and was very rapidly expanding and cooling. Approximately 10⁻³⁷ seconds into the expansion, a phase transition caused a cosmic inflation, during which the Universe grewexponentially.^[36] After inflation stopped, the Universe consisted of a quark–gluon plasma, as well as all other elementary particles.^[37] Temperatures were so high that the random motions of particles were atrelativistic speeds, and particle–antiparticle pairs of all kinds were being continuously created and destroyed in collisions. At some point an unknown reaction called baryogenesis violated the conservation of baryon number, leading to a very small excess of quarks and leptons over antiquarks and antileptons—of the order of one part in 30 million. This resulted in the predominance of matter over antimatter in the present Universe.^[38]

The Universe continued to grow in size and fall in temperature, hence the typical energy of each particle was decreasing. Symmetry breaking phase transitions put the fundamental forces of physics and the parameters of elementary particles into their present form.^[39] After about 10⁻¹¹ seconds, the picture becomes less speculative, since particle energies drop to values that can be attained in particle physicsexperiments. At about 10⁻⁶ seconds, quarks and gluons combined to form baryons such as protons and neutrons. The small excess of quarks over antiquarks led to a small excess of baryons over antibaryons. The temperature was now no longer high enough to create new proton–antiproton pairs (similarly for neutrons–antineutrons), so a mass annihilation immediately followed, leaving just one in 10¹⁰ of the original protons and neutrons, and none of their antiparticles. A similar process happened at about 1 second for electrons and positrons. After these annihilations, the remaining protons, neutrons and electrons were no longer moving relativistically and the energy density of the Universe was dominated by photons (with a minor contribution from neutrinos).

A few minutes into the expansion, when the temperature was about a billion (one thousand million; 10⁹; SI prefix giga-) kelvin and the density was about that of air, neutrons combined with protons to form the Universe's deuterium and helium nuclei in a process called Big Bang nucleosynthesis.^[40] Most protons remained uncombined as hydrogen nuclei. As the Universe cooled, the rest mass energy density of matter came to gravitationally dominate that of the photon radiation. After about 379,000 years the electrons and nuclei combined into atoms (mostly hydrogen); hence the radiation decoupled from matter and continued through space largely unimpeded. This relic radiation is known as the cosmic microwave background radiation.^[41]

[luckytxn 2,265]

Nicely done, Txn!

Good post.

I try. I loved physics when I took it in school and was even planning on majoring in it. Of course I was already working in a Petroleum laboratory and since they were paying for my classes they insisted I major in Chemistry. Go figure.

[scandal 951]

I try. I loved physics when I took it in school and was even planning on majoring in it. Of course I was already working in a Petroleum laboratory and since they were paying for my classes they insisted I major in Chemistry. Go figure.

I've always loved physics too, particularly cosmology.

There's nothing wrong with chemistry. Or any scientific discipline.

Why do you hate climate scientists?

[luckytxn 2,265]

I've always loved physics too, particularly cosmology.

There's nothing wrong with chemistry. Or any scientific discipline.

Why do you hate climate scientists?

Don't hate them. Don't hate anybody. Hating people is defeating ones soul.