Where did all matter come from?

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I’ve hear before that the big bang wasn’t really an explosion, more of the point in time where the universe started rapidly expanding. Can someone explain where the all the matter that makes up planets, stars, etc. came from?

In: Physics

10 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

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Anonymous 0 Comments

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Anonymous 0 Comments

>Can someone explain where the all the matter that makes up planets, stars, etc. came from?

No, they can’t. There are different theories but what came before the big bang is entirely unmeasurable and therefore unknowable. Time, as we understand it, didn’t exist.

Anonymous 0 Comments

In the theory as you’ve presented before the Big Bang all matter was condensed into a single hyper dense point which then expands outward

Anonymous 0 Comments

The very early Universe was extremely hot, hotter than even the cores of the hottest supernovas today. It was filled with a soup of particles that, under the conditions we see today, would be incredibly unstable.

As the Universe expanded, cooled, and aged, those particles decayed into other particles (in the same way that a radioactive element can decay today, but much more quickly). Eventually (and by “eventually” I mean “roughly 1 second after the Big Bang”), they decayed into the only particles that are stable for long periods of time (where “long” here means “minutes”): photons, protons, electrons (stable) and neutrons (unstable by themselves but relatively long lived) and the antimatter equivalents of each.

For reasons that are not completely understood, more protons, electrons, and neutrons were made than antiprotons, antielectrons, and antineutrons: for every billion or so of each of them, there was one extra proton/electron/neutron. Each particle and antiparticle paired off and destroyed each other, which left just those few leftover protons, electrons, and neutrons.

Over the next few minutes, some of the neutrons decayed, but most of them got stuck to protons. And finally, the Universe cooled down that electrons could attach to protons to form the first atoms. That left the following types of particles in the Universe:

* A huge number of Photons (light)
* A moderate number of Hydrogen atoms (electrons ‘orbiting’ [not really] protons)
* A few Helium atoms (electrons ‘orbiting’ [not really] protons and neutrons stuck together)
* A very small number of lithium atoms, which had even more protons and neutrons stuck together.

The history of the Universe pauses here for a long time – many hundreds of thousands of years – in which pretty much nothing happens. But eventually stars formed, and the reactions within stars would convert hydrogen into the other elements we see today (in particular, all the elements other than Hydrogen that you see on a rocky planet like Earth).

Anonymous 0 Comments

Nope. It’s still one of the great mysteries. We cannot yet discern any origin story for the universe that does not involve matter having to come from “somewhere.” There are theories everywhere from the universe being recursive to black holes being cosmic drains into other universes, sparking new big bangs, to getting into quantum mechanics.

The truth is that we may never know, and that is ok. We’re just three pound jellyfish in calcium jars. We don’t have to have all the answers.

Anonymous 0 Comments

We know how it happened, we just don’t know why. In the very first moments of the big bang, a phenomenon known as baryonic asymmetry occurred. According to the conservation of energy, there should have been an equal number of left handed baryons and right handed anti-baryons created. These would have collided with and annihilated each other. But that isn’t what happened. Every so often, an extra left handed baryon was created (left handed is referring to the spin of the particle). After all the matter/antimatter pairs were annihilated in those first moments, these extra baryons were what was left over. They eventually coalesced into matter. And that is how we have a matter filled universe, and not an antimatter filled universe, or what we would have expected; no universe at all.

Now, as to how the big bang happened in the first place, or why baryonic asymmetry occurred, those are still mysteries to physicists. One hypothesis is that the universe is a simulation, which implies that it was initiated by some form of intelligence. I personally like that theory the best, because I suspect that the creation of a universe is something that intelligent beings such as ourselves could one day achieve.

Anonymous 0 Comments

So I’ve been playing around with an idea, literally no scientific theory just asinine stoner thoughts. But in Einstein’s theory of relativity there exists the probability of a white hole, an near infinite point of mass, and as far as I know every theorys math basically corroborates this point. Again asinine stoner thoughts, but I like story telling. Anyway the super massive black hole that is the galactic core of our galaxy, assuming our math is correct, what if every super massive black hole that’s trying to devour as much mass as possible one day reach a critical mass and become the supposed mass singularity. This would be a state that a super massive black hole would reach when even its own gravity inverts itself and releases an near infinite mass of exotic particles that quickly breakdown leaving behind the more common particles we’re used to seeing. In our universe it’s hydrogen that fuels the universe as it’s what was left behind by the exotic particles, physics was determined when our white hole/big bang exerted itself or physics is true between all “universes.”

Edit: rwaxh: reach

Anonymous 0 Comments

Just dropping in a hypothesis that may freak some of you out.

So you know in extreme cases like right after the universe began quantum fluctuations can produce matter and antimatter pairs of particles. (You may have geard about virtual particles, its nonsense.) So these matter and antimatter particles would have cancelled but the universe inflated quickly and femtometers became light-years. These particles got so far away from each other that there is no way they can eliminate. So there you have it the universe is symmetric its just that some of the matter and antimatter got blown away from each other and formed galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Where there were more matter like here we ended up with things being matter. Where antimatter was more abundant it formed antimatter things. Since both matter and antimatter behave the same way there is no difference on larger scales all interactions play out the same.

Just so you know it is very possible that distant galaxies are actually antimatter. And we have no way of knowing for sure.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the weather.