The Big Bang. What really happened?

"Ok, Albert. So I’m convinced about this Big Bang idea, now tell me what actually happened at the start of the Universe."

Well, here’s what we think happened, because of course no-one was there to watch it. At the start there was no such thing as space, no atoms. All the energy and matter in the entire universe started in one super-concentrated blob. Then for reasons we will probably never know it exploded with a massive release of energy and particles.


Remember the quarks, gluons, protons and neutrons I told you about before? (If you never read that bit click here).

“Well, I remember the names.”

That will do for now. Well the quarks and gluons were the first matter to be made and all these particles rushed out in the first moments of creation. At the start that was all there was, there weren’t any atoms to begin with. It took a millionth of a second for the quarks to stick together to make protons and neutrons. It took a few minutes more for things to cool down to a few billion degrees, cool enough to allow protons and neutrons to sick together into simple atomic nuclei. Even space itself was popped into existence out of nowhere. Imagine the fabric of space scrunched into a tiny ball then suddenly bursting out and expanding – a bit like one of those air-bags in cars.

“How can you know about air-bags? They weren’t invented when you were alive.”

You have forgotten that I once worked in the patent office and I was in fact alive when the airbag was invented. John W. Hetrick got a patent on that idea in 1953 but just like the big bang it took people decades to catch onto the idea.

“So was the start of the universe like an exploding egg as you said last time or an exploding airbag?”

Well, the Big Bang was perhaps a little closer to an exploding airbag than an exploding egg, but scaled up a trillion fold.

“So that was it, one mega explosion and all the matter in the universe just burst into existence?”

It wasn't just that lots of matter was created. There was lots of anti-matter created too.

"What's anti-matter?"

Science fiction writers love anti-matter but it is real stuff. Anti-matter and matter are complete opposites in some ways and exact copies in another. They are sort of mirror images of each other with one crucial difference. Anti-matter and matter can't mix like normal materials. In fact when they mix they annihilate each other and release energy. One big question about the start of the Universe is where did all the antimatter go, since most theories need it there as the universe was born. There was the slight possibility that all the matter in the universe might have been destroyed in the first few seconds by colliding with all the anti-matter flying around at the same time. So it would have been a very short lived universe. If that had happened we wouldn’t be here to worry about it.

“So what did happen?”

One theory goes that at the start there wasn't a perfect balance between matter and anti-matter. The division was about 50.0000001% matter and 49.9999999% anti-matter. So that there was lots of energy, lots of annihilation but at the final whistle matter came through by a whisker. Of course perhaps anti-matter won, and the universe is full of anti-matter. How could you tell? Physicists would still call the other stuff anti-matter because it was different from the stuff that made up the universe. Perhaps in a parallel universe somewhere there are anti-physicists who are sighing with relief that antimatter won out at the start of it all. One more thing to worry about I suppose.

“Albert?”

Yes?

“You’re rambling a bit there.”

Oh, sorry. I got a bit carried away.