Early moments of the Big-Bang...

kelly1

Hello all, I don't usually post in this thread but I'm hoping someone could answer
this question for me please?

According to what I've read the laws of physics supposedly break down in the early moments of the big bang.

Is this because if you were to compress all the atoms in the universe together, you would be left with a "ball" about the size of an orange and so the Big-Bang couldn't have come from a singularity under the normal laws of physics?

Don't tell me, it's a bit more complicated than that? :-)

Thanks for reading.

Noel.

Spear

kelly1 wrote:

Hello all, I don't usually post in this thread but I'm hoping someone could answer
this question for me please?

According to what I've read the laws of physics supposedly break down in the early moments of the big bang.

Is this because if you were to compress all the atoms in the universe together, you would be left with a "ball" about the size of an orange and so the Big-Bang couldn't have come from a singularity under the normal laws of physics?

Don't tell me, it's a bit more complicated than that? :-)

Thanks for reading.

Noel.

The phrase "breaks down" is somewhat misleading. At high denisty and temperature/pressure, different behaviours such as force unification crop up, including the separation of particles into their constituent quarks and the like.

This chart shows the progression backwards and the uncommon behaviour that occurs at each stage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_timeline_of_the_Big_Bang

Son Goku

There two issues.
The first is that near the big bang it is too hot to treat the electroweak force and the strong nuclear force as seperate forces, they mesh together into the electronuclear force for which we have no definite working model. When you hear the phrase Grand Unification it refers to this problem.

Secondly eventually, very close to the Big Bang, it becomes too hot for spacetime to exist. This is the Quantum Gravity problem.

kelly1

Son Goku wrote:

There two issues.
The first is that near the big bang it is too hot to treat the electroweak force and the strong nuclear force as seperate forces, they mesh together into the electronuclear force for which we have no definite working model. When you hear the phrase Grand Unification it refers to this problem.

Secondly eventually, very close to the Big Bang, it becomes too hot for spacetime to exist. This is the Quantum Gravity problem.

That's way over my head!

How does't space/time cease to exist at extremely high temperatures?

Is the basic problem that we don't understand the early big-bang or that we
can't construct a mathematical model of it? Or is this the same problem?

Regards,
Noel.

Son Goku

kelly1 wrote:

That's way over my head!

How does't space/time cease to exist at extremely high temperatures?

Think of it like water and ice. I can say how hard or solid ice is (e.g. "this is brittle ice", "this is tough ice"), but I can't say how hard water is. (i.e. nobody ever says "this is brittle water") So H2O losses the property of hardness when it goes into its liquid state.
Or to put it another way H2O needs to be cold for the word hard to make any sense.

Space and time are similarly only properties of the universe when it is in its current "frozen" state. Back when the universe was very hot, they didn't exist.
The Universe needs to be cold for time and space to make any sense.

The Big Bang has more in common with water freezing into ice than any other everyday phenomena I can think of.

kelly1 wrote:

Is the basic problem that we don't understand the early big-bang or that we
can't construct a mathematical model of it? Or is this the same problem?

In physics, particularly at this level, they're pretty much the same problem. It's very hard to understand stuff without mathematical conepts.

ambasite

BBC 2 @ 9pm tonight:

Horizon: The Six Billion Dollar Experiment

A massively expensive experiment involving the Large Hadron Collider - essentially an attempt to recreate the big bang, with failure meaning the creation of a black hole.

Son Goku

ambasite wrote:

essentially an attempt to recreate the big bang, with failure meaning the creation of a black hole.

What? Creating Black holes would be interesting, new physics. Not a failure. I wonder what Horizon will say.

LFCFan

Son Goku wrote:

What? Creating Black holes would be interesting, new physics. Not a failure. I wonder what Horizon will say.

Well if a black hole was created would that not destroy the planet? I'd pretty much put that down to a massive failure

Son Goku

LFCFan wrote:

Well if a black hole was created would that not destroy the planet? I'd pretty much put that down to a massive failure

The ones at the LHC will be too small and die in a few moments, in fact bigger black holes are constantly being made in the Antarctic and all snow capped mountains from starlight hitting the snow.

Interesting fact #24: CERN, the LHC and other particle accelerators were only built because studying high up on the mountains became too dangerous. Over 200 physicists died over the years from falling into crevices.

aequinoctium

when will the LHC be fixed after fermilab's screw-up?
was it as bad as it sounds?

Son Goku

aequinoctium wrote:

when will the LHC be fixed after fermilab's screw-up?
was it as bad as it sounds?

Yeah it will be fixed. It was very bad for certain experiments, particularly the Higgs experiments and thus had to be fixed immediately. It didn't do damage to much of the surrounding equipment so in that sense it was easier to fix. Although it was very embarrassing for fermilab.

The piece of equipment was designed to deflect beams of particles.