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How and why were elementary particles formed?

2021-01-28T13:10:49.110Z


We do not know if there is a reason for their formation, but if there is, science cannot explain it Science can explain how they were formed but not why. We do not know if there is a reason for their formation, but if there is, science cannot explain it. What science can tell us is what physical mechanisms gave rise to the formation of elementary particles. It all started with the Big Bang, about 14 billion years ago. When the Big Bang occurred, there was an immense amount of energy in the form


Science can explain how they were formed but not why.

We do not know if there is a reason for their formation, but if there is, science cannot explain it.

What science can tell us is what physical mechanisms gave rise to the formation of elementary particles.

It all started with the Big Bang, about 14 billion years ago.

When the Big Bang occurred, there was an immense amount of energy in the form of radiation and elementary particles were formed from that initial energy.

We know that in the first fractions of a second the universe was very hot, with temperatures greater than thousands of trillions of degrees and very small, so much so that the entire universe could fit in an atom and with a very large density.

Nothing like what we have today.

From the radiation itself and from Einstein's formula (E = mx c²), we know that matter can be generated.

So from all that radiation equal amounts of particles and antiparticles were produced.

Elementary particles are the basic component of matter, that is, those components that cannot be further divided and that, as far as we know, lack an internal structure.

Antiparticles are identical to particles, but when charged, the charge is opposite.

All elementary particles have an associated antiparticle, although some of them, like the photon, are their own antiparticle.

That universe in formation of the first moments was like an amalgam of these elementary particles.

We know this as the primordial soup.

These particles had very high energies, moved at enormous speed and collided with each other, which in turn produced more particles and more radiation.

And at that moment practically all elementary particles were formed.

Since that event, some elementary particles have been produced artificially in particle accelerators.

These devices use electromagnetic fields to make particles collide at very high speed with each other and in this way cause the appearance of new particles.

Also after the Big Bang, other elementary particles have been produced in natural processes such as radioactive decay or particle collisions, as is the case with atmospheric neutrinos.

But it is a tiny proportion compared to the total matter in the universe, so it can be said that all the matter that we have in the universe today comes from that primordial soup.

Once the universe began to expand and cool down, these elementary particles were making combinations among themselves and protons and neutrons were formed.

Once the universe began to expand and cool down, these elementary particles were making combinations among themselves and protons and neutrons were formed.

Later the nuclei of helium and deuterium were formed, which is an isotope of hydrogen formed by a proton and a neutron.

This is like the history of the evolution of the cosmos, once the elementary particles already existed the formation of everything else began that gave rise to the appearance of matter as we know it.

We call this moment from 300 seconds after the Big Bang to a thousand years later the epoch of primordial nucleosynthesis.

All the helium and hydrogen that exist in the cosmos, as well as other light atomic nuclei, formed at that time because the temperatures that existed in the universe thereafter were no longer high enough to continue their production.

The rest of nuclei heavier than lithium, composed of three protons and four neutrons, are produced in stars from the fusion of light nuclei, while the superheavy ones, beyond iron, have their origin in supernovae.

Mariam Tórtola

is a professor at the Faculty of Physics of the University of Valencia and a researcher at the Institute of Corpuscular Physics, a joint center of the CSIC and the University of Valencia.

Question sent via email by

Juan Fernández

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-01-28

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