[DUG] General Theory

Fri May 12 18:56:37 NZST 2006

OT means strictly off topic. Sorry I cant resist this post,
since someone else started it.

OK well I am not exactly an AstroP but I know a little bit. 
If you go back to the big bang, then its a matter of
temperature, or in terms of the energy involved you can
describe things in eV (electron volts).
The half decent BB theories start to kick in at about 10^-44
seconds.
At 10^-37 sec it expanded most rapidly, basically you can
look at it as an adiabatic thermal process, where the energy
per unit volume is dropping and things are uncoupling and
condensing out.
Neutrino physics may be important here but these things are
pretty hard to study because the ones we get from our sun
tend to go right through the earth.
Well anyway due to a useful asymmetry (maybe involving
neutrinos), a bit more matter than antimatter was formed,
and the balance of antimatter positrons annihilated with
matter electrons, to give heaps of photons, plus the matter
your body eventually got made from.
After 10^-3 seconds, as the bubble gets bigger and the
energy density drops,  the leftover protons and neutrons of
matter start to condense together to make the lighter
nuclei, and we get the very well known and studied reactions
involving neutrons amongst hydrogen, deuterium, tritium and
their isotopes.
The gas is plasma whch means that the oppositely charged
electrons are their in equal numbers, and when the
temperature drops right down (maybe a quarter of an hour
after the start of the show)  we end up with about 75%
hydrogen and 25% helium, in gaseous form, which is basically
all we have today.

Except for the embarrassing fact of dark matter, and dark
energy, which is like 10 times as much as the hydrogen, and
nobody is even sure what it is.  It does stuff like keep the
galaxies rotating like a bicycle wheel on that scale,
instead of like the varied rotational speeds we see on the
scale of say the solar system planets etc.

The photons are cooling off too and that's the cosmic
background we now see at about 3 degrees kelvin.

Back to the BB, now density may be thin, but the temperature
can stay in the millions of degrees until we can figure out
how to get hydrogen atoms to lose some energy.  By colliding
they just share it, they don't lose it.  This is where my
favourite science starts, enter chemistry, stage left.

Once you can get two hydrogens slow enough to stick
together, you got a hydrogen molecule.  It acts an a kind of
evolutionary catalyst, because it is able to vibrate and
rotate in many more lower energy modes.
So a hydrogen molecule can start to degrade thermal kinetic
energy and radiate it away as thermal photons.  This allows
the hot gas to cool, and the next stage of condensation into
giant low density stars can start.

The low abundance elements Beryllium and Boron are formed in
the interstellar medium by cosmic rays, so there are only
ever trace elements.
The stars form carbon up to iron by nuclear fusion.

Later as the bigger stars form they go nova and blow off
material forming the fissile heavy elements into the
interstellar medium, so elements like iron accumulate in
more abundance than you would expect due to fusion.

Umm, well to finish the story,  organic molecules  condense
out of stellar nebulae and life condenses out of organic
chemistry.
Life condenses out of chemical factories under good
conditions, and under really good conditions it can take
over the geochemistry of an entire planet.

One such chemical factory was started on the earth, due to a
luck chance encounter collision when it was forming, that
removed 90% of its crust and left it orbiting around it,
which we call the moon.
This allowed tectonic plates to form and allowed water to be
constantly drawn down into an underground aquifers under the
oceans along the plate bounds and driven back up again,
creating a complex circulation system rich in organic
chemicals, minerals grains, and allowed self modifying
circulation patterns to produce complex plumbing.
The cycling motion of water produced the equivalent of a
programming loops and branches, as this natural computing
system passing chemical over substrates.
The natural chirality of crystal surfaces can be seen in the
chirality of biomolecules to this day, betraying their
evolutionary heritage.

Sulphur based metabolic systems, based on key chemicals such
as thioglutamate, eventually gave way to alternatives as
life arouse from under the sea, and into the sea.  It was a
bootstrapping of many coexisting systems.
As life altered rock, heavy basalts were transformed into
lighter granites, which ended up in vast flaoting rafts of
land, only earth has granites.
Later life was able to climb up onto these continental
granites and develop a level of dexterity that underwater
living did not demand.
Life made the atmosphere, and the land, and transformed the
planet.

Sorry I glossed over a bit ;)

> There are about 10^80 protons & neutrons (baryons) if this
> helps - which  equates to about 10% of the mass of the
> universe (more than 99% of the  mass of the visible
> component of the universe that is).  I would assume  there
> would be about the same number of electrons.  But I'm a
> bit behind  on my astrophysics, I use to read a lot of
> popular science books, but  this new stuff about dark
> energy and the universe accelerating faster  and faster as
> time goes on sounds a bit weird to me.
>
> My guess would be that there are about the same number of
> protons as  electrons - charge is something that seems to
> be preserved (Technically  it's Charge, Parity and Time).
> There are, however other particles that  are charged.  So
> assuming that the universe does not have an overall
> charge, there should be approximately the same number of
> protons as  electrons - the exception being some of these
> other less commonly known  particles making up the
> difference.
>
> Are there any particle physicists that can clear this up
> (and probably  set me wrong)?
>
> Alister
>
> Neven MacEwan wrote:
> > Kyley
> >
> > I suggest you read 'QED The stange theory of Light and
> > Matter' by R P  Feynman (Also would highly recommend his
> > autobigraphy "Surely you're  joking Mr Feynman")
> >
> > Then you start wondering "how many sub-atomic particles
> are there?" >
> > Neven
> >
> > Kyley Harris wrote:
> >> I am starting to wonder how many electrons there are to
> every proton. >>
> >>
> >>
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>
> --
> Alister Christie
> Computers for People
> Ph: 04 471 1849 Fax: 04 471 1266
> http://www.salespartner.co.nz
> PO Box 13085
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> Wellington
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