Table of Contents
Was the Big Bang an accident?
Something like 50 years ago, two astronomers made a discovery by accident, which became central to the current leading theory of the creation of the universe – and the theory which the most cosmologists consider to be essentially correct: The Big Bang.
How were atoms made after the Big Bang?
About one ten-thousandth of a second after the Big Bang, protons and neutrons formed, and within a few minutes these particles stuck together to form atomic nuclei, mostly hydrogen and helium. Hundreds of thousands of years later, electrons stuck to the nuclei to make complete atoms.
Why did ordinary atoms form only many years after the Big Bang?
Roughly 380,000 years after the Big Bang, matter cooled enough for atoms to form during the era of recombination, resulting in a transparent, electrically neutral gas, according to NASA.
How did atoms form in the universe?
It’s just that when you heat hydrogen to 3000K, the protons and electrons ionize. At 300,000 years, atoms formed. Then about a billion years later, when you had the first stars, the star light caused most of the gas in the universe to ionize again.
How was the universe formed after the Big Bang?
Right after the Big Bang, the universe was a hot soup of particles. It took about 380,000 years to cool enough that the particles could form atoms, then stars and galaxies. Billions of years later, planets formed from gas and dust that were orbiting stars.
How long after the Big Bang did hydrogen appear?
Hydrogen didn’t appear until the universe had spread out — and subsequently cooled — enough for the first protons and neutrons, and later simple atoms, to form. Between about 10-12 and 10-6 second after the Big Bang, neutrinos, quarks, and electrons formed.
Why is the universe made of matter and not anti-matter?
The fact that everything we see in the observable universe is made of matter and not anti-matter suggests that, contrary to our normal experience of physics, when the energy released in the Big Bang was converted to mass, there was slightly more matter than anti-matter.