Did Gravity Exist Before the Big Bang?

[Sylickon]

Atoms were created 300,000 years after the big bang when the universe had finally cooled down enough. Did gravity exist before that point in time? If so what did it act like? thanks :)

 

[alphali]

yes gravity existed then by the energy not matter because energy and mass are equivilant (e=mc2) then the fabric of space can also be warped by energy and so exerts gravity.but i don't understand what u mean by what did it act like?

 

[Sylickon]

but what effect would gravity have on energy? what would be the difference between gravity existing and not existing at that time?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

You can see the effect that gravity has on energy such as light. Photons are massless but they do warp space in the same way mass does, when photons themselves fly through a gravity well their path is changed. This can be seen in gravitational lensing.

 

[Nabeshin]

The entire theory of the big bang is contingent on the fact that gravity exists -- i.e. General Relativity describes the motion of the universe as a whole. It is not at all important what is inside the universe -- whether it be atoms, people, electrons, or purple unicorns. We expect General Relativity to be correct up until very early after the big bang, something like 10^-40s to be conservative (roughly the Planck time).

Before this time, we expect some manifestation of what we call gravity to be present, but likely one needs to account for quantum corrections.

 

[PRDan4th]

Did the first two sub-atomic particles agglomerate by the force of gravity before there were atoms?

 

[Nabeshin]

Did the first two sub-atomic particles agglomerate by the force of gravity before there were atoms?

No. With respect to the gravitational force between individual entities in the universe, it is negligibly small for most of the universe's history. Specifically, the random thermal motion was more than enough to make the force of gravity basically moot in determining particles' trajectories.

 

[bcrowell]

To be a little more concrete -- before the universe was cool enough to have neutral atoms, it had nuclei and electrons. At some time before that, it was so hot that rather than protons and neutrons, there was a quark-gluon plasma. So it's not as though there were no massive particles.

There is a wonderful popular-level book on this kind of thing called The First Three Minutes.

-Ben

 

[alphali]

as u increase the temp in a medium u increase the energy of the particles in that medium and thus there speed. and in the first fraction of a second after the big band the temp was about 10 billion degrees kelvin and thus the particles where highly energetic to the point that not even the strong nuclear force (the em force is about 10^40 times stronger than gravity and the strong nuclear force is stronger than em force) was able to bind protons and neutrons together . after the universe cooled down the strong nuclear force was able then to combine neutrons together with protons then after the universe cooled even more the em force was able to form atoms and at last the gravity was able to form stars and galaxies.