Originally posted by Toughiv
Astynaxx you said quarks and leptons evolved into protons and neutrons, how is this so? Evolved?
No, what I said is a little different.
Originally posted by Astyanax
Atoms evolved from quarks and leptons very early in the lifetime of the universe.
Quarks and leptons didn't turn into protons and neutrons, but protons and neutrons evolved from these fundamental particles.
In the minuscule fractions of the first second after creation what was once a complete vacuum began to evolve into what we now know as the universe. In the very beginning there was nothing except for a plasma soup... the universe was tremendously hot as a result of particles of both matter and antimatter rushing apart in all directions...
As the universe expanded further, and thus cooled, common particles began to form. These particles are called baryons and include photons, neutrinos, electrons and quarks would become the building blocks of matter and life as we know it. During the baryon genesis period there were no recognizable heavy particles such as protons or neutrons because of the still intense heat. At this moment, there was only a quark soup...
After the universe had cooled to about 3000 billion degrees Kelvin, a radical transition began which has been likened to the phase transition of water turning to ice. Composite particles such as protons and neutrons, called hadrons, became the common state of matter after this transition. Still, no matter more complex could form at these temperatures. Although lighter particles, called leptons, also existed, they were prohibited from reacting with the hadrons to form more complex states of matter. These leptons, which include electrons, neutrinos and photons, would soon be able to join their hadron kin in a union that would define present-day common matter.
After about one to three minutes had passed since the creation of the universe, protons and neutrons began to react with each other to form deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen... Source
Baryonic matter is made up of quarks and leptons. My apologies for any confusion that may have been caused by my phraseology.
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Originally posted by Toughiv
We have established that there has been evidence from Cephid Variables to suggest the rate at which the Universe is expanding is accelerating.
Actually from Type 1a supernovas. Edwin Hubble used Cepheid variables to establish the expansion in the first place.
Overall, that would mean that the total energy throughout the Universe is increasing? Would that not mean that the mass of the Universe is also becoming greater?
No, but given the reason you're asking, this is a really excellent question; I'm not a physicist to be able to answer it authoritatively, and sadly the only ATS member who really is a physicist (as far as I know; doubtless there are others) appears to have been banned a few days ago.
What I can tell you is that the amount of mass-energy in the universe is certainly not increasing. What is happening is that one form of energy is being transformed into another. It looks at first glance like dark energy -> kinetic energy, but I doubt it's as simple as that because, as far as we know, dark energy doesn't interact directly with matter - it acts on space itself.
Don't forget that the expansion of space is nonrelativistic - that's how points in space can end up moving apart from each other at superluminal velocities. I doubt that the applied mathematics of relativity apply to it any more than Newtonian mechanics does.
Any real physicists out there who can answer this?
(Braces himself against the avalanche of pseudoscientific nonsense that is sure to result from the above inquiry.)
[edit on 15/6/09 by Astyanax]
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