java physics

De Morgan's transformation

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The Universe is now 1 minute old, and all the anti-matter has been destroyed by annihilation with matter. The leftover matter is in the form of electrons, protons and neutrons. As the temperature continues to drop, protons and neutrons can undergo fusion to form heavier atomic nuclei. This process is called nucleosynthesis.

As the Universe expands and cools and the process of creation and annihilation of matter/anti-matter pairs slows down. Soon matter and anti-matter has time to undergo other nuclear processes, such as nuclear decay. Many exotic particles, massive bosons or mesons, can undergo decay into smaller particles. If the Universe is out of equilibrium, then the decay process, fixed by the emergent laws of Nature, can become out of balance if there exists some asymmetry in the rules of particle interactions. This would result in the production of extra matter particles, rather than equal numbers of matter and anti-matter.

Soon after the second symmetry breaking (the GUT era), there is still lots of energy available to produce matter by pair production, rather than quark confinement. However, the densities are so high that every matter and anti-matter particle produced is soon destroyed by collisions with other particles, in a cycle of equilibrium.

As the Universe cools a weak asymmetry in the direction towards matter becomes evident. Matter that is massive is unstable, particularly at the high temperature in the early Universe. Low mass matter is stable, but susceptible to destruction by high energy radiation (photons).

After GUT matter forms, the next phase is for GUT matter to decay into lepton and quark matter. Lepton matter will become our oldfriends the electron and neutrino (and their anti-particles). But quark matter is unusual because of the property of quark confinement.

Quarks can never be found in isolation because the strong force becomes stronger with distance. Any attempt to separate pairs or triplets of quarks requires large amounts of energy, which are used to produce new groups of quarks.

Spacetime arrives when supergravity separates into the combined nuclear forces (strong, weak, electromagnetic) and gravitation. Matter makes its first appearance during this era as a composite form called Grand Unified Theory or GUT matter. GUT matter is a combination of what will become leptons, quarks and photons. In other words, it contains all the superpositions of future normal matter. But, during the GUT era, it is too hot and violent for matter to survive in the form of leptons and quarks.

The flatness problem relates to the density parameter of the Universe, W. Values for W can take on any number between 0.01 and 5 (lower than 0.01 and galaxies can't form, more than 5 and the Universe is younger than the oldest rocks). The measured value is near 0.2. This is close to an W of 1, which is strange because W of 1 is an unstable point for the geometry of the Universe.

In the early Universe, pressures and temperature prevented the permanent establishment of elementary particles. Even quarks and leptons were unable to form stable objects until the Universe had cooled beyond the supergravity phase. If the fundamental building blocks of Nature (elementary particles) or spacetime itself were not permanent then what remained the same? The answer is symmetry.

Often symmetry is thought of as a relationship, but in fact it has its own identical that is preserved during the chaos and flux of the early Universe. Even though virtual particles are created and destroyed, there is always a symmetry to the process. For example, for every virtual electron that is formed a virtual positron (anti-electron) is also formed. There is a time symmetric, mirror-like quality to every interaction in the early Universe.

The first moments after the Planck era are dominated by conditions were spacetime itself is twisted and distorted by the pressures of the extremely small and dense Universe into a mass of black holes and wormholes.

Most of these black holes and wormholes are leftover from the Planck era, remnants of the event horizon that protected the cosmic singularity. These conditions are hostile to any organization or structure not protected by an event horizon. Thus, at this early time, black holes are the only units that can survive intact under these conditions, and serve as the first building blocks of structure in the Universe, the first `things' that have individuality.