Genesis was empty - how was our universe created? - Part II'

These are revolutionary insights we discover with the help of physics! We who are used to the "cave" life where bodies have a definite and unique position and speed and where it seems possible to move in any direction, are able to get out of the cave and know the real reality in which we live. A reality in which particles are in several places at the same time and space and time are an existing and spreading thing on which we are "drawn".

"During the month of March 2014, we received the first experimental confirmation that the universe underwent an accelerated expansion a fraction of a second after the Big Bang and further confirmation of Einstein's theory of general relativity. This is how we expand our understanding of reality and take another step closer to a theory of everything and to a complete understanding of our universe and how it was created. Welcome to the second part of a brief history of the universe! In this series we will review both the insights we have been able to reach to date in the field of cosmology
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Welcome to the winding path out of the cave, welcome to the other side!

• Genesis was empty - how was our universe created? - Part a'
• Genesis was empty - how was our universe created? - Part III
• Genesis was empty - how was our universe created? - Part IV

These are revolutionary insights we discover with the help of physics! We who are used to the "cave" life where bodies have a definite and unique position and speed and where it seems possible to move in any direction, are able to get out of the cave and know the real reality in which we live. A reality in which particles are in several places at the same time and space and time are an existing and spreading thing on which we are "drawn". Without space time, matter would not develop and we would not develop. As the essence of Donald Duck is that he is a cartoon character from a cartoon, so the essence of matter and our essence is that we are characters that exist within the four-dimensional space-time that was created at the time of the Big Bang. Note that all these insights are backed up by experiments that confirm them as detailed below. What else will we discover about our essence and reality? For example, are there other universes with different time-space and is it possible to go outside our time-space? These are excellent questions to which we still have no idea what the answer is. But we jumped too far ahead, how do we continue and get from the formation of space-time to the formation of matter? We have not yet finished developing the theory of how our universe evolved into the state it is today.

(The Doors – Break On Through (To the Other Side

In the beginning there was nothing. was empty
A ripple of energy appeared from the void,
The Big Bang - the creation of space-time

The big bang created the space and time we live in and within them dispersed all the energy that was contained in it. This energy was enormous and according to the theory of relativity there is a relationship between mass and energy. From the famous formula E=mc² it follows that mass is another type of energy, a kind of rest energy. Mass is a property that many particles have, and we too when we step on the home scale we measure our mass (and not our weight). So after the big bang this enormous energy rolled into particles with mass as well as light radiation (consisting of massless particles called photons). If we take a gas and compress it into a small place, the gas particles will collide more and more with each other and the gas will heat up. On the other hand, when we increase the volume in which the gas can be, the gas particles will move more freely and collide less and less with each other, as a result the gas will cool. This is the situation that prevailed at the beginning of our universe, as time passed the universe continued to grow, the newly formed space-time stretched and increased the volume of the universe. As the universe grew, the particles had more space to move around and they cooled. According to estimates, right after the big bang the temperature in the universe that he was born in was around 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 degrees Celsius! (1 followed by 31 digits, 10 million trillion trillion). The particles moved at enormous speed, collided, connected and immediately disintegrated, creating a kind of primordial "hot particle soup". After a long time, about 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the volume of the universe increased so that the electrons lost enough energy and moved slowly enough to be trapped by the electric force created by the proton charges without escaping. This is how the simplest atom was created - the hydrogen atom (which consists of one electron and one proton held together by an electromagnetic force due to their opposite electric charges). At this point the temperature of the universe has already dropped to a "low" temperature of around 2,727 degrees Celsius (for comparison, today the temperature measured in interstellar space is around -270 degrees Celsius which is 2.7 degrees above absolute zero where no particle moves). After the creation of the hydrogen atoms, the universe continued to cool and heavier atoms could be formed, such as the helium atom, which has two electrons and two protons. Thus, the standard model of cosmology manages to explain how the particles and atoms were formed and manages to accurately predict the amount of hydrogen atoms, helium and other elements that we see in the universe around us.

In the beginning there was nothing. was empty
A ripple of energy appeared from the void,
The Big Bang - the creation of space-time
The universe began to expand (and there is no meaning in the question of where)!
The creation of particles and atoms

Supreme and lofty symmetry and its breaking

The idea of ​​unification and symmetry was manifested in the Big Bang and the first seconds after it. The point that contained all the matter and energy of the universe and that went through the big bang event was in a state of perfect symmetry. In this state it was impossible to differentiate between energy, matter or force. Everything was in a uniform state with no distinguishing features. After the Big Bang and the formation of space-time this symmetry began to break at a dizzying rate. In the symmetrical state, things look the same and cannot be distinguished. When the symmetry is suddenly broken, differences are created and things can be distinguished. Consider for example glass, when you heat it enough it becomes liquid and you get a perfect and symmetrical glass bubble where all sides look exactly the same. Then take it out of the oven and let it cool. The cooling destroys its symmetry and cracks and bubbles form in certain places inside the glass bubble. Similarly, at the time of the Big Bang the universe was hot and perfectly symmetrical. After the big bang the universe cooled and immediately "cracks" appeared in the symmetry. The featureless energy turned into particles with different properties that can be distinguished between them, so symmetry breaking created matter. In addition, the fundamental forces we know today were also unified into one symmetrical force. After the Big Bang, this symmetry between the forces of nature was broken and the various forces separated from each other into the four fundamental forces in nature that we know today - gravity, electromagnetic force (the electric and magnetic forces), strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force. According to the estimate, all of these separated from one unified force in ridiculously short times right after the big bang. Again, we still do not have the theory that knows how to unite all the forces, but from the theories that have been confirmed we can estimate how this symmetry was supposed to be broken and even estimate when each force separated from the other united forces.

The first force to break away from the symmetry of forces is gravity. This break happened in the 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 part of the first second of the existence of the universe after the big bang (42 digits after the decimal point). To complete this hallucinatory picture, let's recall that the temperature then was the same temperature we mentioned earlier at which the "hot particle soup" was. This is a huge temperature called the Planck temperature (or Planck energy), we still don't have a theory that knows how to deal with this energy. This energy requires a theory that takes into account both Einstein's general theory of relativity and quantum theory. Such a theory would describe quantum gravity to us. We do not yet have such a theory, but there are hints that show that at this time and at this energy gravity broke from the unified force. After that, the strong nuclear force separated about 0.0000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds after the big bang (34 digits after the decimal point) with a temperature of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (1 followed by 27 digits) degrees Celsius. After this separation, all that remains of the unified force is the electroweak force which unites the two forces that have not yet separated, the weak nuclear force and the electromagnetic force. But of course, a short time later, the weak nuclear force and the electromagnetic force also separated when the temperature of the universe dropped to a thousand trillion degrees Celsius (it took "a long time" for this break to happen - 0.000000000001 of the first second of the universe's existence after the big bang). The universe started out with full symmetry and as it cooled the symmetry was broken. If the symmetry had been preserved, we would not be here today, precisely because of the breaking of the symmetry, matter and the four forces as we know them today were created.

In the beginning there was nothing. was empty

A ripple of energy appeared from the void,
The Big Bang - the creation of space-time
The universe began to expand (and there is no meaning in the question of where)!
The symmetry is broken, the union is cracked
The forces separated
The particles were created
A hot ancient soup was getting colder
The particles to atoms began to connect
The atoms bonded to each other

Genesis was empty - how was our universe created? - Part a'

Author's note:

This coming June, Nir Lahav plans to give lectures on this topic as part of the series I give at cinemateks across the country, the science and reality research series (in the month of April, the lecture will be at the end of Holocaust Day on the topic: Is man's nature evil from his youth?) Please follow the blog posts free and happy.

More of the topic in Hayadan:

• First direct evidence of the existence of gravitational waves that caused the universe to swell immediately after the big bang - an interview with Prof. Avi Leib from Harvard University, the head of the department of the main researcher who performed the experiment
• We received an important message from the fraction of a second after the Big Bang - an interview with Prof. Mark Kamionkowski who devised the experiment
• How does the telescope at the South Pole that discovered the gravitational waves created by the Big Bang work?
• What are gravitational waves?
• An attentive ear to the echoes of the Big Bang