There is no irony in the fact that with this proposed discussion of The Beginning of All That Is ConserveLiberty wants to make clear that A Most Significant Point needs to be understood first. And that point is:

Note   →   This entire description is, in the end, hypothetical.   ←   Note

I was once taught that, "In Biology, while we may attempt to observe a lot of facts in order to understand what is going on and why, for the most part what we understand are not Facts. They are Theories. Theories that we come to by proposing credible hypotheses that we hold skeptically and that we test in order to prove or disprove them. As hypotheses persist, and we accumulate more observations consistent with their being true, and find no facts that disprove their truth (even though earnestly trying to,) some hypotheses graduate to the status of Theories."

Yet, despite our evidence, we also hold theories skeptically. We often find that theories that appear quite sound can eventually be disproven. Perhaps we had not looked hard enough or creatively enough or lacked the proper tools to disprove them until later. It is not that The Truthfulness of the Theory actually changed. It always was either true or false. However, our comprehension of the status of the truthfulness of our theories may change as we collect and discover more evidence."

So it is with Creation, and especially the physics which attempts to model and describe The Beginning of All That Is. We have collected, analyzed, and judged a lot of evidence. Evidence from astronomy, from subatomic particle physics, etc. Yet, our math and our technologies fail us as we get ever closer to addressing what The Beginning might have manifested itself as At and Near the very Beginning.

Discussed below is one "interpretation" of the ensembles of theories that together attempt to create The Theory of Everything. Backed up by a lot of facts, all these theories must still be entertained skeptically ... as all the scientists studying them and generating evidence for them still do.

These are Theories, discussing what their models propose. They are NOT understood to be unassailable or non-disprovable Facts.

Through extensive examination of both:

• the cosmic universe at the broadest and most sensitive spectrum detection resolutions possible, improving year after year, and
• high energy physics experiments focusing on the most fundamental components detectable that comprise all that is known, also improving year after year ...

... we have come to believe we understand how all the hydrogen and non-hydrogen nuclei in the universe has and continues to be formed.

Hydrogen nuclei (i.e. protons) were not formed at the moment of The Beginning - The Big Bang. Rather:

• Planck epoch
  • The earliest stage of The Big Bang, before the time passed was equal to the Planck time, t_P, or approximately 10^-43 seconds. There is no currently available physical theory to describe such short times. It is generally assumed that quantum effects of gravity dominate physical interactions at this time scale. At this scale, the unified force of the Standard Model is assumed to be unified with gravitation. The state of the Planck epoch was succeeded by the Grand Unification Epoch, where gravitation is separated from the unified force of the Standard Model, in turn followed by the Inflationary epoch, which ended after about 10^-32 seconds (or about 10¹⁰ t_P)
    
    
  • ending 10^-43 seconds after The Big Bang.
  
  
• Grand Unification Epoch
  • Started 10^-43 seconds after The Big Bang, when three of the four fundamental interactions - electromagnetism, the strong interaction, and the weak interaction - were still unified as the electronuclear force. Gravity had separated from the electronuclear force at the end of the Planck era. During the Grand Unification Epoch, physical characteristics such as mass, charge, flavour and colour charge were meaningless.
    
    
  • ending 10^-36 seconds after The Big Bang when several key events took place. The strong force separated from the other two still unified fundamental forces (i.e. electromagnetism and the weak interaction.) The temperature fell below the threshold at which X and Y bosons could be created, and the remaining X and Y bosons decayed. It is possible that some part of this decay process violated the conservation of baryon number and gave rise to a small excess of matter over antimatter (see baryogenesis). This phase transition is also thought to have triggered the process of cosmic inflation that dominated the development of the universe during the following Inflationary Epoch.
  
  
• Inflationary Epoch
  • Started 10^-36 seconds after The Big Bang, when a phase transition after the Grand Unification Epoch generated the "inflation field." As this field settled into its lowest energy state throughout the universe, it generated a repulsive force that led to a rapid expansion of space.
    
    
  • ending between 10^-33 to 10^-32 seconds after The Big Bang. The inflation increased the linear dimensions of the universe 10²⁶ fold ... to perhaps 10 cm in length. Its volume thus increased 10⁷⁸ fold. After the Inflationary Epoch, the universe continued expanding, although at a much slower rate, and has continued expanding to this day.
  
  
• Electroweak Epoch
  • Started 10^-36 to 10^-32 seconds after The Big Bang (also known as the Inflationary Epoch), when the strong force separated from the electroweak interaction. Particle interactions in this phase were energetic enough to create large numbers of exotic particles, including W and Z bosons and Higgs bosons. As the universe expanded and cooled, interactions became less energetic.
    
    
  • ending 10^-12 seconds after The Big Bang when W and Z bosons ceased to be created. The remaining W and Z bosons decayed quickly, and the weak interaction became a short-range force in the following Quark Epoch.
  
  
• Quark Epoch
  • Started 10^-12 seconds after The Big Bang, when the preceding Electroweak Epoch ended as the electroweak interaction separated into the weak interaction and electromagnetism. Now all four of the fundamental interactions (gravitation, electromagnetism, the strong interaction, and the weak interaction ) were separated, but the overall energy of the universe was still too high to allow quarks to combine together to form hadrons.
    
    
  • ending 10^-6 seconds after The Big Bang when the average energy of particle interactions had fallen below the binding energy of hadrons. The following period, when quarks became confined within hadrons, is known as the Hadron Epoch.
  
  
• Hadron Epoch
  • Started 10^-6 seconds after The Big Bang, when the temperature of the universe had fallen sufficiently to allow the quarks from the preceding Quark Epoch to bind together into hadrons.
    
    
  • ending 1 second after The Big Bang once the temperature of the universe continued to fall, hadron/anti-hadron pairs were no longer produced. Most of the hadrons and anti-hadrons were then eliminated in annihilation reactions, leaving a small residue of hadrons.
    
    
  • Note: A proton (also, when alone and not bound with other protons or neutrons, known as ¹H) is a hadron. It is a subatomic particle consisting of 3 quarks (2 up, 1 down) bound together by gluon mediated forces. The combination of 2 up and 1 down quark gives the proton a net charge of +1. A neutron is also a hadron, consisting of 3 quarks (1 up, 2 down) bound together by gluon mediated forces. The combination of 1 up and 2 down quarks gives the neutron a net charge of 0.
  
  
• Lepton Epoch
  • Started 1 second after The Big Bang, ending thru 10 seconds
    
    
  • ending 10 seconds after The Big Bang once the temperature of the universe had fallen to the point where lepton/anti-lepton pairs were no longer created. Most leptons and anti-leptons were then eliminated in annihilation reactions, leaving a small residue of leptons.
    
    
  • Note: An electron is a lepton. An electron has a charge of -1.
  
  
• Photon Epoch
  • Started 10 seconds after The Big Bang.
    
    
  • Big Bang Nucleosynthesis started 3 minutes (10 seconds?) ending thru 20 minutes after The Big Band, producing
    • Hydrogen (¹H (primary, mass abundance 75%), ²H (secondary, mass abundance 0.01%), ³H (radioactive, decaying to ³He))
    • Helium (⁴He (primary, mass abundance 25%), ³He (trace, mass abundance 0.01%))
    • Lithium (⁷Li (primary, mass abundance 10^-10))
    • Beryllium (⁷Be (radioactive, decaying to ⁷Li))
    
    Big Bang Nucleosynthesis refers to the production of nuclei other than those of the lightest isotope, (hydrogen-1, ¹H) which has a single proton as a nucleus. At this time the universe was cool enough for deuterium (²H) to survive, AND hot and dense enough for fusion reactions to occur at a significant rate.
    
    
  • ending after 379,000 years once the temperature of the universe fell to the point where nuclei could combine with electrons to create neutral atoms. As a result, photons no longer interacted frequently with matter, the universe became transparent and then structure formation took place.
  
  
• Structure Formation - the formation of galaxies, galaxy clusters and larger structures from small early density fluctuations.
  • Began after the Photon epoch, continues to this day, and is responsible for galaxy, galaxy cluster, and larger structure creation in the universe, as well as the synthesis of all non-hydrogen nuclei in the universe through the process of stellar nucleosynthesis.

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ConserveLiberty suggests (hypothesizes) that one might consider star and galaxy formation, ultimately leading to stellar nucleosynthesis and well as various stars, supernovae, highly dense objects such as neutron and quark stars and eventually Black Holes ... to be processes driven primarily by Gravity that could eventually have the end result of Reversing The Big Bang. In other words, if The Big Bang occurred as described above, Gravity itself is the Fundamental Force, Rule, or Prerequisite that brings All That Was Once One (or None) back together to again be One (or None).

Perhaps the reversion, The Big Crunch, will unfold as a reversal of the Big Bang. In other words, at The End, the Unfolding is actually a Refolding, until it is One (or None).

Once Structure Formation was underway 380,000 years ago (note: it is still underway) stars and galaxies made their appearances. After larger elements were nucleosynthesized, both as a result of stellar fusion reactions and supernova explosions, solar systems with stars and rocky planets were able to form.

Our own solar system began to take shape 4.6 billion years ago. As dust grains from previous stellar explosions aggregated into clumps, then planetesimals, then planets (a process known as accretion) and the Earth was formed. Millions of collisions have taken place and continue to take place, forming and enlarging some objects, breaking apart and destroying others.

A Tour of RW Aur A (3:06). More info.

Here is an artist's rendering of the destruction of planets or planetesimals believed to have been witnessed recently within a solar system relatively close to ours.


→ The "Getting to Where We Are" Section was last updated 07 Aug 2018 19:45 PDT ←

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