# Mass and density of the Big Bang's "superatom"
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-and-density-of-the-big-bangs-superatom/329436
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [November 4, 2005, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-and-density-of-the-big-bangs-superatom/329436 "2005-11-04T06:02:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Agent\_Foxtrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agent_Foxtrot)
#### Post date: [November 4, 2005, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-and-density-of-the-big-bangs-superatom/329436/1 "2005-11-04T06:02:39Z")
Is it possible to calculate the rough mass and density of the “superatom” which held all matter in the Universe prior to the Big Bang? If so, what are they?
Adam
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### Author:  [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)
#### Post date: [November 4, 2005, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-and-density-of-the-big-bangs-superatom/329436/2 "2005-11-04T06:13:25Z")
> [@Agent Foxtrot](#):
>
> Is it possible to calculate the rough mass and density of the “superatom” which held all matter in the Universe prior to the Big Bang? If so, what are they?
>
> Adam
IIRC I don’t think the concept is that there was some “super-atom” or any kind of particles, but that matter was created more less out of nothingness by multidimensional quantum “inflation” after some critical density in (something) was reached. Some also hypothesize that several of the then existing multiple dimensions enfolded themselves down to the present 3 + time as result of this inflation.
[Wikipedia says](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang)
> [@](#):
>
> The early universe was filled homogeneously and isotropically with a incredibly high energy density and concomitantly huge temperatures and pressures. It expanded and cooled, going through phase transitions analogous to the condensation of steam or freezing of water as it cools, but related to elementary particles.
>
> Approximately 10-35 seconds after the Planck epoch a phase transition caused the universe to experience exponential growth during a period called cosmic inflation. After inflation stopped, the material components of the universe were in the form of a quark-gluon plasma (also including all other particles—and perhaps experimentally produced recently as a quark-gluon liquid [1]) in which the constituent particles were all moving relativistically. As the universe continued growing in size, the temperature dropped. At a certain temperature, by an as-yet-unknown transition called baryogenesis, the quarks and gluons combined into baryons such as protons and neutrons, somehow producing the observed asymmetry between matter and antimatter. Still lower temperatures led to further symmetry breaking phase transitions that put the forces of physics and elementary particles into their present form. Later, some protons and neutrons combined to form the universe’s deuterium and helium nuclei in a process called Big Bang nucleosynthesis. As the universe cooled, matter gradually stopped moving relativistically and its rest mass energy density came to gravitationally dominate that of radiation. After about 300,000 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 the cosmic microwave background
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### Author:  [@Agent\_Foxtrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agent_Foxtrot)
#### Post date: [November 4, 2005, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-and-density-of-the-big-bangs-superatom/329436/3 "2005-11-04T06:16:12Z")
> [@astro](#):
>
> IIRC I don’t think the concept is that there was some “super-atom” or any kind of particles, but that matter was created more less out of nothingness by multidimensional quantum “inflation” after some critical density in (something) was reached. Some also hypothesize that several of the then existing multiple dimensions enfolded themselves down to the present 3 + time as result of this inflation.
>
> [Wikipedia says](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang)
> [@](#):
>
> The early universe was filled homogeneously and isotropically with a incredibly high energy density and concomitantly huge temperatures and pressures. It expanded and cooled, going through phase transitions analogous to the condensation of steam or freezing of water as it cools, but related to elementary particles.
>
> Approximately 10-35 seconds after the Planck epoch a phase transition caused the universe to experience exponential growth during a period called cosmic inflation. After inflation stopped, the material components of the universe were in the form of a quark-gluon plasma (also including all other particles—and perhaps experimentally produced recently as a quark-gluon liquid [1]) in which the constituent particles were all moving relativistically. As the universe continued growing in size, the temperature dropped. At a certain temperature, by an as-yet-unknown transition called baryogenesis, the quarks and gluons combined into baryons such as protons and neutrons, somehow producing the observed asymmetry between matter and antimatter. Still lower temperatures led to further symmetry breaking phase transitions that put the forces of physics and elementary particles into their present form. Later, some protons and neutrons combined to form the universe’s deuterium and helium nuclei in a process called Big Bang nucleosynthesis. As the universe cooled, matter gradually stopped moving relativistically and its rest mass energy density came to gravitationally dominate that of radiation. After about 300,000 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 the cosmic microwave background
Hah! I was just reading this article as you posted it.
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### Author:  [@Agent\_Foxtrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agent_Foxtrot)
#### Post date: [November 4, 2005, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-and-density-of-the-big-bangs-superatom/329436/4 "2005-11-04T06:17:40Z")
> [@astro](#):
>
> IIRC I don’t think the concept is that there was some “super-atom” or any kind of particles, but that matter was created more less out of nothingness by multidimensional quantum “inflation” after some critical density in (something) was reached. Some also hypothesize that several of the then existing multiple dimensions enfolded themselves down to the present 3 + time as result of this inflation.
>
> [Wikipedia says](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang)
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > The early universe was filled homogeneously and isotropically with a incredibly high energy density and concomitantly huge temperatures and pressures. It expanded and cooled, going through phase transitions analogous to the condensation of steam or freezing of water as it cools, but related to elementary particles.
> >
> > Approximately 10-35 seconds after the Planck epoch a phase transition caused the universe to experience exponential growth during a period called cosmic inflation. After inflation stopped, the material components of the universe were in the form of a quark-gluon plasma (also including all other particles—and perhaps experimentally produced recently as a quark-gluon liquid [1]) in which the constituent particles were all moving relativistically. As the universe continued growing in size, the temperature dropped. At a certain temperature, by an as-yet-unknown transition called baryogenesis, the quarks and gluons combined into baryons such as protons and neutrons, somehow producing the observed asymmetry between matter and antimatter. Still lower temperatures led to further symmetry breaking phase transitions that put the forces of physics and elementary particles into their present form. Later, some protons and neutrons combined to form the universe’s deuterium and helium nuclei in a process called Big Bang nucleosynthesis. As the universe cooled, matter gradually stopped moving relativistically and its rest mass energy density came to gravitationally dominate that of radiation. After about 300,000 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 the cosmic microwave background
Hah! I was just reading this article as you posted it. But I figured that if we have a good guess as to how many atoms there are in the Universe, we can guess its density and mass relative to an estimated volume, no?
Adam
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### Author:  [@Agent\_Foxtrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agent_Foxtrot)
#### Post date: [November 4, 2005, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-and-density-of-the-big-bangs-superatom/329436/5 "2005-11-04T06:18:46Z")
:smack: Stupid double-post.
Adam
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [November 4, 2005, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-and-density-of-the-big-bangs-superatom/329436/6 "2005-11-04T09:53:49Z")
> [@Agent Foxtrot](#):
>
> Is it possible to calculate the rough mass and density of the “superatom” which held all matter in the Universe…
Bit of a pointless nitpick, but the entity you’re describing also _was_ the universe at that time - i.e. it wasn’t some superdense object floating in empty space, it _was_ space too - all of it.
> [@](#):
>
> … prior to the Big Bang?..
Another pointless nitpick; the BB was the origin of _time_ as well as space and matter, so the term ‘prior to’ has no proper meaning.
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### Author:  [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)
#### Post date: [November 4, 2005, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-and-density-of-the-big-bangs-superatom/329436/7 "2005-11-04T13:50:50Z")
> [@Mangetout](#):
>
> Another pointless nitpick; the BB was the origin of _time_ as well as space and matter, so the term ‘prior to’ has no proper meaning.
I came into the thread to say the same thing. I don’t really think that’s a “pointless nitpick” – it’s an important and often misunderstood idea. You _can’t_ talk about “before the Big Bang”. Which kind of makes this question unanswerable. But the closest I can come to an answer is: if the universe really did start with a singularity, then the further back you go in time (towards the Big Bang) the greater its density gets – increasing towards infinity. Its mass/energy content is presumably the same as the mass/energy content of the whole universe today.
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### Author:  [@Carnac\_the\_Magnificent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carnac_the_Magnificent)
#### Post date: [November 4, 2005, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-and-density-of-the-big-bangs-superatom/329436/8 "2005-11-04T15:07:22Z")
> [@Mangetout](#):
>
> Another pointless nitpick; the BB was the origin of _time_ as well as space and matter, so the term ‘prior to’ has no proper meaning.
Unless one hypothesizes that the most recent BB was but one of an infinite series of ongoing BB’s. At which point, can one argue that the most recent BB “reset” the clock to zero, or is just a continuation of a larger process?
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [November 4, 2005, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-and-density-of-the-big-bangs-superatom/329436/9 "2005-11-04T15:17:51Z")
> [@Carnac the Magnificent!](#):
>
> Unless one hypothesizes that the most recent BB was but one of an infinite series of ongoing BB’s. At which point, can one argue that the most recent BB “reset” the clock to zero, or is just a continuation of a larger process?
Absent some framework of ‘meta-time’ in which this could occur, the term ‘series’ is also meaningless.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [November 4, 2005, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-and-density-of-the-big-bangs-superatom/329436/10 "2005-11-04T15:18:53Z")
(as also is ‘ongoing’)
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [November 4, 2005, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mass-and-density-of-the-big-bangs-superatom/329436/11 "2005-11-04T19:21:07Z")
You can (in principle) answer questions about the Universe at any time after T=0 (though are current physics isn’t adequate for times earlier than 10[sup]-43[/sup] seconds or so). But so far as anyone can currently tell, you can’t meaningfully answer questions about the moment T=0 itself. And there isn’t even any time T\<0 to ask questions about, meaningful or not.