Where does all the matter in the universe come from?
I’m no but astrophysicist but I understand a little about the Big Bang Theory and also that there’s lots of stuff we don’t know or probably ever will know about it.
But the universe is awfully big and must have an awful lot of matter in the form of asteroids, stars, asteroids and suchlike. Did all matter in the universe originally exist at the centre of the Big Bang or is new matter being constantly created? If so, how?
Apologies if this is an elementary astrophysical question but I couldn’t find the answer web-browsing…
All of the matter in the Universe is made from some of the energy of the Universe, clotted up into lumps. All of the energy has been there since forever.
Okay, I know that energy takes many forms and that it can be converted to other forms but that it can’t be created or destroyed. How does or did the energy turn into matter?
Was all the matter in the Universe created at the moment of the Big Bang?
It doesn’t blow your mind that all the stuff out there (pick your favorite
Hubble photos of the jillions of galaxies) all came from a speck that was
smaller than an atom?
Are the calculations for the Singularity such, that the ongoing discovery
of new galaxies never makes that speck one iota bigger or denser?
Ahh, today with the easy questions? I think this one boils down to Why is there something rather than nothing? and I don’t think anyone has really cracked that one, unless you want to simply blame the Flying Spaghetti Monster for the whole mess.
So matter is cooled or frozen energy. Me throwing a ball is a form of energy but I find it hard to imagine that energy turning into a rock of iron or lead…or even a grain of sand! What form of energy was being converted into matter? What forms of energy were there at the moment of the Big Bang?
Is that fact that “all the stuff out there…all came from a speck that was smaller than an atom”? How can something smaller than an atom create all the atoms in the whole Universe? It sounds impossible to fit that much energy in such a miniscule space. “Dense doesn’t begin to describe it” sounds like a slight understatement…!
This is not a subject that can be answered in a paragraph. You need background just to get the concepts, and then explanation of each concept and how it fits together into the whole.
I’m very serious when I say, read a book. The cosmology section of a library or bookstore will have dozens of books attempting to make the subject comprehensible to those who haven’t studied physics. The issue for us is that every single question you ask requires a chapter or two just to begin answering. Just the basics of a question like what is energy will fill up the first half of a book. And you need to read that entire first half to get to the weird stuff in the second half.
A number of real working scientists have written top-notch, understandable, readable books in recent years. Even if they seem overwhelming, they start from easy beginnings and lead the reader gradually deeper and deeper. It’s truly worth the effort and you’ll get a thousand times more out of it than you will from here. We just don’t have the time or the space. (Yes, pun intended.)
I think that’s Exapno Mapcase’s point: The density is so great, it is probably beyond anyone’s ability to comprehend, and thus beyond anyone’s ability to articulate meaningfully. Except, perhaps, in a mathematical formula where you just scratch out the sign for infinity. How meaningful would that be for you, for me, for most of us in the world?
Perhaps the singularity contained within it all the possible values for all the characteristics, such as temperature, granularity population, and the various values for the various “constants” we observe. The “universe” is the expression of that aspect for which duration of the singularity could be greater than zero. Other aspects might exist, however their duration is not contiguous with our own.
Answer from a Chemistry 101 student, so take this with a huge grain of NaCl:
It doesn’t “turn into” matter. Everything is energy, just slower or faster, more energy or less energy. When something has very little energy, we call it “matter” - when it holds very little energy even compared to other matter, we call it a “solid” and when it contains quite a bit of energy when compared to other matter, we call it a “gas”. (Somewhere in between is a “liquid”.)
A hydrogen atom, at the scale of something, well, scalable, is about like a baseball stadium - the pitcher’s mound is the nucleus, and way out in the back bleachers is a gnat flying around. That’s the electron. Almost the entire “atom” is empty space. The “particles” (the proton and neutron in the nucleus and the electron) are nothing - they’re energy. They’re a tendency for energy to act in a predictable way. There’s a bit of energy <here> that tends to repel a bit of energy <here> and so we call one the proton and one the electron, but they’re not, strictly speaking, bits of anything at all. They’re energy. And somehow, all that energy “adds up” somehow, to a hydrogen atom. Which, in turns, hangs out with other atoms, interacts in funny ways, and when enough of them hang out with enough oxygen atoms, I get to drink the water. Which, of course, is nothing but energy. As am I.
Yes, sooner or later, chemists and physicists sound a whole lot like metaphysical gurus and stoners.
Is it physically possible for something to be that dense in the Universe now or were the rules of the Universe not set before the moment of the Big Bang? (I realise that may be an impossible question to answer…).
P.S. If you can suggest a “birds and the bees” style book on astrophysics and the formation of the Universe please tell. Something lighter on the equations and heavier on heavier on the analogies and story-telling. “Once upon a time there was a little atom all alone in the Universe and he decided he wanted some friends to play with…”
The explosion that started it off released an enormous amount of energy .It was extremely hot. As it cooled it coalesced into the building block chemicals that constitute the universe, Slowly as it cooled ,it created more and more building components. Solid objects came billions of years later.
I like the baseball analogy. Continuing along the same lines, if the whole Universe Big Bang-ed from something smaller than an atom what might that uber-atom have looked like if it were a baseball stadium…?
Yes, if you could try and explain the formation of the Universe purely in terms of baseball stadiums, pitchers mounds and gnats it would be much appreciated…
Perhaps not all that long, though. This (and other recent observations) has stirred the pot on the recipe for a new universe, in the last decade or so.
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