I used to understand the Big Bang Theory as (this is obviously the condensed version) a release of hydrogen which cooled into the various stars and other heavenly bodies. Since then I’ve heard there’s more to it than that, so I have a couple questions.
1)What are the names of the particles that were released that formed the helium, hydrogen, and other such elements that expanded and then cooled down, thus forming the universe.
2)Besides stars and gaseous planets, is hydrogen responsible for solid formations, like planets, asteroids, and so on?
Very elementary description of the big bang:
Prior to one Planck interval after the origin of time itself it is not possible to describe conditions, or interactions in the universe. It was apparently quite hot, and there were some undetermined number of loci which began behaving like particles. The most elemental particle which we have now defined is the Quark.
Once the quarks existed, and could interact over space, and a planck interval had passed, forces could act between quarks, and those forces could cause quarks to combine, or disassociate. As this ocurred, space and time themselves were manifested, and in the case of space, expanded in three dimensions. Time seems to have expanded in only one direction. That may be an artifact of observation, but it is not possible to test the contrary possibility.
Quarks continued to move, collide, rebound, combine, and disassociate. Space continued to expand, as time passed. The rate at which these things happened, is somewhat controversial at this time. However, in the earliest few trillionths of a seconds at least, no other defined particles existed. Some time after three seconds, but before three hundred thousand years, Protons, electrons, and neutrons were formed. ( I wish I could be more specific, and many physicists are more specific about this, but unfortunately the ones who are specific are not in agreement, and I lack the knowledge to critique the arguments offered in support.)
So, in answer to your question, yeah, it seems like the original particles (quarks) that were formed are at least the bulk, if not the entirety of all the matter that ever was. It was all just free protons at first, and the neutrons were formed shortly (either seconds, or thousands of years) thereafter. Then, in a few hundred thousand years, things cooled down enough that those protons, and in some cases the neutrons too formed hydrogen gas.
Now, things were still expanding, and for some very abstruse reasons, some things were clumping up, here and there. So, stuff began colliding in fairly large amounts, probably after only a half billion years or so. The stuff was still almost entirely Hydrogen gas. But, when it collided, it began to attract itself into large clouds of gas, which began to contract, relative to the cloud, although still expanding relative to everything else. The contracting clouds began getting very dense in the middle, and very hot, as well. Eventually fusion began happing, blowing the clouds up from multiple centers, and sending out wave fronts through clouds of hydrogen, which now contained helium.
Now you had stars. Big ones, by the way. So big, that they lasted only a few hundred million years, and then went supernova. That resulted in fusion of very high order, creating all the elements you are familiar with, but still mostly hydrogen, and helium.
It all goes on for more billions of years. Eventually you get superclusters of galaxies in sheets and walls spread out over billions of light years. It must have been a lot of quarks.
Tris
Thank you.