Was the Big Bang a quantum mechanical vacuum fluctuation?

[mark!]

It has been proposed by Edward P. Tryon that the Universe may be a large scale quantum mechanical vacuum fluctuation where positive mass-energy is balanced by negative gravitational potential energy, as a consequence of the early inflationary launch of the expansion of the Universe, in which these quantum fluctuations particles got amplified, which would explain how our Universe could have inflated from these particles. But what particle(s) exactly? What initial particle is being referred to here?

It is known that light preceded matter, so bosonic energy, chronologically speaking, could have been the first elementary particle to give rise to all the other particles that formed from it later. The Big Bang theory is said to have started from one single point. If I’m understanding it correctly, this hypothesis referring to that 1 point as being only 1 particle. Of course, it seems more probable that the Universe started out with one particle, rather than a bunch of particles to start out with, but that does not mean that this hypothesis therefore has to be correct.

When a photon is scattering with matter or antimatter, part of energy from the photon is given to matter/antimatter, and a new photon with smaller energy is created. A particle which received energy from photon is accelerated. It can be repeated over and over again, and from an initial 511 KeV photon after millions of such interactions, you will have millions of photons with very low energies (e.g. visible spectrum, then infrared).

But wait a minute, a photon that preceded all other particles? To suggest that an electromagnetic particle such as the photon could have been the first particle before all the other particles, from which the strong and weak force came forth later, that has to be backed up with scientific facts, observations and maths. It has already been proven that the electroweak force once preceded electromagnetism and the weak force. Concerning the strong force, which is carried out between protons and neutrons, when for instance a neutron decays, electromagnetism does indeed “show up” (a neutron decays into proton, electron and antineutrino). Again, there seems to be electromagnetism involved. However, this does not mean that the strong force came after electromagnetism, and this hypothesis therefore has to be true. I’d like to know if anyone here could provide me with facts in favour of this hypothesis, or against this.

The law of conservation of energy forbids new energy to be added (because energy can neither be created nor destroyed), so the suggestion that a boson, like the photon, could have pair produced two matter/antimatter particles (a gamma photon is able to create a pair of electron-positron must have at least 1.022 MeV energy) seems to be the only remaining option to explain the vast amount of matter and energy in the Universe we have today, because this conservation law has to be satisfied, since new energy could not have been generated/added, therefore the existing energy could only have been changed/divided. The question how this first bosonic energy could have been in existence in the first place is the domain of philosophy, not science, so I won’t make any suggestions about that mystery, I’m only trying to find out the chronology of the Big Bang, and what happened after that first initial particle. If this hypothesis is true (which I’m not so sure about yet), taking inverse Compton scattering in account (in which a charged particle transfers part of its energy to a photon), it’s not quite clear to me how to get from an electron/positron pair to, well, more than an electron/positron pair, because they can’t divide any further, can they?

 

[phinds]

The Big Bang theory is said to have started from one single point.

Not by serious physicists it's not. The Big Bang Theory is a description of how the universe evolved from a hot dense plasma at the end of inflation up to where we are now. It is silent about how everything started. Theories that purport to describe what happened at t=0 (the mathematical singularity you get if you extrapolate time backwards) are speculative and not part of the Big Bang Theory.

EDIT: by the way, this "big bang started as a single point in space" is probably THE most widely misstated fact in physics and has been debunked here on PF approximately 7,831 times. Pop science is entertainment, not science.

 

[mark!]

this "big bang started as a single point in space" is probably THE most widely misstated fact in physics

That's why I said:

Of course, it seems more probable that the Universe started out with one particle, rather than a bunch of particles to start out with, but that does not mean that this hypothesis therefore has to be correct.

Do I understand you correctly that starting out with more than 1 particle is more plausible?

 

[berkeman]

has been debunked here on PF approximately 7,831 times

7,832 when you include this thread...

 

[DaveC426913]

Do I understand you correctly that starting out with more than 1 particle is more plausible?

No. Whatever t=0 was, it was very likely not a particle at all. Multiplying it doesn't help the plausibility.

It was a very small, very dense, very hot region, with unknown properties, that expanded very rapidly.

 

[Bandersnatch]

quantum fluctuations particles

That's the first I hear of quantum fluctuation particles. Shouldn't that be just quantum fluctuations?

 

[phinds]

It was a very small, very dense, very hot region, with unknown properties, that expanded very rapidly.

Actually, it's possible that it was not small at all but rather was infinite in extent.

Also, I'm not so sure about the "unknown properties". Weinberg wrote a whole book about it (The First Three Minutes)

 

[mitchell porter]

The big bang is supposed to start with a superhot plasma in which all particle species are represented equally, more or less. Inflation is the standard idea for what came before that; and before that, some kind of cosmological boundary condition or initial value.

 

[DaveC426913]

Actually, it's possible that it was not small at all but rather was infinite in extent.

Also, I'm not so sure about the "unknown properties". Weinberg wrote a whole book about it (The First Three Minutes)

We are talking about t=0. i.e. less than 10^-43s.

 

[phinds]

We are talking about t=0. i.e. less than 10^-43s.

Fair enough

 

[nikkkom]

It is known that light preceded matter

Who said that?

The law of conservation of energy

...holds exactly only in a Universe with exact time translation symmetry. This seems not be the case in our Universe on largest scales (galaxy cluster and up).

I’m only trying to find out the chronology of the Big Bang

Start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_the_universe ?

 

[mark!]

Who said that?

The first atoms formed 400,000 years after the Big Bang. if you start off with a hot Universe, and you let it cool down, you’ll predict that you wind up with about 74% hydrogen and about 24% helium (by mass), which is the initial composition of every star. Our sun right now consists of about 62% helium (because it's about 5 billion years old), but initially this was 24%. All elements, except hydrogen and helium, are made in a star. "If the Big Bang were to generate the right amount of helium and other light nuclei, then there must have been an era in the early history of our Universe in which light, not matter, made up most of the energy" (a quote from Dan Hooper from Fermilab).

...holds exactly only in a Universe with exact time translation symmetry. This seems not be the case in our Universe on largest scales (galaxy cluster and up).

Are you saying that the law of conservation of energy is not a universal law?

 

[nikkkom]

The first atoms formed 400,000 years after the Big Bang. if you start off with a hot Universe, and you let it cool down, you’ll predict that you wind up with about 74% hydrogen and about 24% helium (by mass), which is the initial composition of every star. Our sun right now consists of about 62% helium (because it's about 5 billion years old), but initially this was 24%. And all elements, except hydrogen and helium, are made in a star. "If the Big Bang were to generate the right amount of helium and other light nuclei, then there must have been an era in the early history of our Universe in which light, not matter, made up most of the energy" (a quote from Dan Hooper from Fermilab).

"light made up most of the energy" is not the same as "light preceded matter".

The former statement simply says that most of the energy was in the form of photons in early, hot periods. Which is hardly a surprise, given that blackbody emissivity is proportional to T^4.

The latter says that there was a time where there was only light. No support for that.

Are you saying that the law of conservation of energy is not a universal law?

Yes.

 

[phinds]

Are you saying that the law of conservation of energy is not a universal law?

To expand on that a bit, conservation of energy is universally true LOCALLY. That is, everywhere in the universe energy is conserved on small scales (~ within glactic clusters) but over cosmological distances it is not.

 

[mark!]

To expand on that a bit, conservation of energy is universally true LOCALLY. That is, everywhere in the universe energy is conserved on small scales (~ within glactic clusters) but over cosmological distances it is not.

Has the creation or destruction of energy ever been observed?

 

[phinds]

Has the creation or destruction of energy ever been observed?

That's not the point. The point is you can't even DEFINE things like kinetic energy on cosmological scales

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/02/22/energy-is-not-conserved/

EDIT: Oh, and by the way, yes. For example, red shifted light from distant objects has lost energy and it hasn't been converted into some other form, it just isn't conserved.

 

[nikkkom]

Has the creation or destruction of energy ever been observed?

Let's say we have a large region of space in our Universe with matter neatly packed in equal number of isolated containers with matter and antimatter.

As Universe expands, the density of energy of this region will fall as a^3. (As is the case for any matter-dominated region).

Now open these containers and let matter and antimatter react, converting most of it into EM radiation. As Universe expands, the density of energy of this region will fall as a^4 now.

Obviously, the setup of this thought experiment can be extended to the entire Universe.

Fishy, isn't it. Depending on what you do with the matter, you get different energy density in the future!

In a flat, non-expanding spacetime (which is time-translation invariant), this would not be the case.

 

[mark!]

Now open these containers and let matter and antimatter react, converting most of it into EM radiation. As Universe expands, the density of energy of this region will fall as a^4 now.

I'm not quite following your example, could you please give another metaphor? I really would like to understand what you mean. Are you referring to dark energy?

red shifted light from distant objects has lost energy and it hasn't been converted into some other form, it just isn't conserved.

Are you sure it hasn't? The zero-energy Universe states that there's just as much gravitational potential energy as "normal" energy, the real, Standard Model energy. In other words, the "not stuff" is equal to "stuff".

Not only objects can exert mass. Massless photons for instance are attracted to black holes, and black holes can't be made of matter, because a neutron star is the densest form of matter known (with masses between 1,4 and 3 Solar masses), in which the electrons have been driven into the nuclei by reverse beta decay. Black holes of course can have a much more mass than 3 Solar masses, so a black hole can't be an object (made of Standard Model "stuff") which is exerting mass to its surroundings, gravitational energy itself is a form of mass. We need dark matter for the same reason, because our "normal" Standard Model matter can't explain all the mass we measure.

According to Einstein, mass can be converted into energy. Dark energy is responsible for the expansion of the Universe, and therefore for the stretching of spacetime, which changes the radiation from short wave to longer waves. So, "hasn't the redshifted long wavelength converted into some other form", as you're arguing @phinds ? This seems to me as a wrong conclusion, because you're measuring the normal matter, the "stuff" from the Standard Model, instead of taking in account gravitational potential energy, the "not stuff", which certainly can "have" mass.

But of course, I could be wrong. I don't claim to be right because I'm not a professional physicist or anything, I'm only explaining how I'm interpreting it, which could be wrong, I can't deny that. I'm only asking questions on this forum because I'd like to understand the subject much better, so please correct me where I went off track. That would be much appreciated .

 

[nikkkom]

I'm not quite following your example, could you please give another metaphor? I really would like to understand what you mean. Are you referring to dark energy?

I'm referring to EM radiation experiencing redshift, which adds yet another factor of a to the rate of decrease of energy density.

 

[phinds]

Dark energy is responsible for the expansion of the Universe, and therefore for the stretching of spacetime, which changes the radiation from short wave to longer waves. So, "hasn't the redshifted long wavelength converted into some other form", as you're arguing @phinds ?

No. I note that nikkon has now told you the same thing. Did you read the article by Carroll? You are arguing against established physics.

 

[mark!]

Did you read the article by Carroll?

No, not yet, I’ll read the article soon (probably tomorrow), I hope it’s going to be an interesting one.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying that my description above is a true description of nature, but I don’t yet see why this way of reasoning should be wrong. I’m looking for a fact/law/equation/anything why it can’t be true. So I’m actually looking for evidence against my own reasoning, not in favour of it, I want to understand why my description can’t be right. But while I’m explaining myself quite extensively and detailed, I’m receiving a rather short answer as a counter-argument, which isn’t overwhelming me with persuasion, if you don't mind me saying it.

I'm referring to EM radiation experiencing redshift, which adds yet another factor of a to the rate of decrease of energy density.

I've tried my best, but I can't follow you there. The photon seems to be only changing, not disappearing.

You are arguing against established physics

I’m arguing against "established science"? I’m referring to dark matter and dark energy. The scientific community don't know what both dark matter and dark energy are, so there is no established science yet about these topic, in order to be able to argue against it.

I’ll read this article, which is in disfavour of the law of conservation of energy, concluding that it's not a universal law. But what about entropy, is that also an approximate/statistical conservation law, instead of a universal one? Or what about the conservation of charge?

 

[phinds]

I’m referring to dark matter and dark energy

The recent discussion has been about conservation of energy. Nikkkom's comment was pointing out that energy density is decreased because photons lose energy and it doesn't go anywhere, it just evaporates.

The best way to "get" the argument against your line of thinking is to learn the actual physics. Then your misunderstanding will evaporate like the energy of EM radiation as it travels over cosmological distances.

 

[nikkkom]

No, not yet, I’ll read the article soon (probably tomorrow), I hope it’s going to be an interesting one.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying that my description above is a true description of nature, but I don’t yet see why this way of reasoning should be wrong. I’m looking for a fact/law/equation/anything why it can’t be true.

Your description is handwavey. Nothing wrong with doing that as the first approximation (more like "zeroth" one), but you should be ready to start looking at the rigorous description as you test your theories against evidence and other well-known physics.

The energy of plasma in thermodynamic equilibrium is equally distributed across all available degrees of freedom. Therefore energy can't be only in photons, unless temperature (nee "average energy of particles") is much below 2*511 keV. Such "low" temperature was reached only at about 10 seconds "after BB". Before that, energy was distributed among photons _and_ electrons/positrons. Before 0.1s, energy was distributed also across muons and pi-mesons. And so on. "Pure photon epoch" has no basis in known physics.

 

[nikkkom]

I've tried my best, but I can't follow you there. The photon seems to be only changing, not disappearing.

Photon's energy is decreasing. Where does it go?

 

[mark!]

I’ve read the article. To summarise it, “Energy isn’t conserved; it changes because spacetime does”.

But the energy itself is still there. No boson or fermion has disappeared. So therefore, from that point of view energy ("stuff" on the Standard Model) “has been conserved”. But of course, something has changed, due to this dark energy (not "stuff" on the Standard Model), so the Universe is not the same any more as it was before, something has definitely been added, so from that point of view energy “has not been conserved”. It’s a matter of terminology, if you also include "gravitational energy" when you're referring to “energy”, then energy is indeed not conserved. But energy from the Standard Model is different from gravitational "energy".

A photon has no charge/mass, but both the matter/antimatter particles do have charge/mass, but together still cancel out to 0. The electron and positron pair still have that same dualistic nature. Maxwell's 2nd law of electromagnetism clearly shows the symmetry in the wave function of the photon, whereas the Schrödinger equation shows symmetry in the wave function of the electron. In other words: it doesn’t matter how often you divide an electromagnetic particle, it will always conserve a north and a south pole, because there is no such thing as a monopole.

Therefore, I’m still a supporter of the zero-energy Universe, and the quantum mechanical vacuum fluctuation to explain the mechanism of the Big Bang, because I’m not aware of any other, more plausible, explanation for the Universe we live in today. Should/shouldn’t I be?

 

[DaveC426913]

Photon's energy is decreasing. Where does it go?

It gets attenuated.

Think of the universe as analogous to an ideal gas in a closed vessel. The temperature will change in inverse proportion to the volume change.
i.e. increase the volume, and the temperature drops, though no energy has left the system.

 

[nikkkom]

I’ve read the article. To summarise it, “Energy isn’t conserved; it changes because spacetime does”.

But the energy itself is still there. No boson or fermion has disappeared. So therefore, from that point of view energy ("stuff" on the Standard Model) “has been conserved”.

Wrong - energy and number of particles are completely different concepts.

Also, number of particles is not a conserved quantity at all. Say, one gamma-ray photon can be converted to millions of visible and infrared photons. Stars do this all the time.

 

[mark!]

one gamma-ray photon can be converted to millions of visible and infrared photons. Stars do this all the time.

Are you referring to this:

When a photon is scattering with matter or antimatter, part of energy from the photon is given to matter/antimatter, and a new photon with smaller energy is created. A particle which received energy from photon is accelerated. It can be repeated over and over again, and from an initial 511 KeV photon after millions of such interactions, you will have millions of photons with very low energies (e.g. visible spectrum, then infrared).

Energy has changed, yes, but it wasn't created or destroyed. You can divide '1' into 1/2 and 1/2, or into 1/4, 1/4, 1/4 and 1/4, but that doesn't mean that energy has been added. It still has been conserved.

 

[sysprog]

The recent discussion has been about conservation of energy. Nikkkom's comment was pointing out that energy density is decreased because photons lose energy and it doesn't go anywhere, it just evaporates.

The best way to "get" the argument against your line of thinking is to learn the actual physics. Then your misunderstanding will evaporate like the energy of EM radiation as it travels over cosmological distances.

Saying that it "evaporates" is not the same thing as saying it "is not conserved". Vaporization is readily recognizable as a disaggregation and not as a non-conservation of the vaporized matter.

Bare remarks to the effect that on a cosmic scale energy isn't conserved are jarring to the sensibilities of many. The expression "is not conserved" is insufficient to account for what happens to the 'not conserved as such' energy. It dis-integrates and dissipates, and although not 'conserved as such', it is nonetheless 'conserved not as such', as a difference in a quantity of a different suchness that is proportional to the difference in the 'not entirely conserved as such' energy.

It goes not from somethingness to nothingness; it goes from a thisness to a thatness, just as everything else in flux does.

 

[nikkkom]

Saying that it "evaporates" is not the same thing as saying it "is not conserved".

In this context, phinds did mean that energy disappears. All CMB photons redshift everywhere.

Bare remarks to the effect that on a cosmic scale energy isn't conserved are jarring to the sensibilities of many.

Facts don't care about your sensibilities.

The expression "is not conserved" is insufficient to account for what happens to the 'not conserved as such' energy. It dis-integrates and dissipates, and although not 'conserved as such', it is nonetheless 'conserved not as such'

If it is "conserved not as such", whatever that means, where, in your opinion, energy of redshifting photons goes?

 

[sysprog]

In this context, phinds did mean that energy disappears. All CMB photons redshift everywhere.

He said evaporates. I replied to what he said. Just as water seems to disappear from a dish left in open air, but is in fact somewhere else rather than simply gone, the energy diminution we encounter in our observations of photons should not be presumed to be un-accounted-for in the grand ledger of the universe.

Facts don't care about your sensibilities.

I'm fairly confident that for the most part you're right about that.

If it is "conserved not as such", whatever that means, where, in your opinion, energy of redshifting photons goes?

I suspect that it goes somewhere other than nowhere. We can observe that it doesn't appear to us to continue to inhere in or exhere from the photons we measure. We cannot thereby infer that it is leaked out of the entire universe.

 

[dreens]

Perhaps its useful to think about this photon energy question in a simpler setting. Consider photons emitted from someone speeding away from you. They arrive at a different frequency, which can be calculated based on relativistic doppler formulas.

However, the intensity of the light is also influenced. I think since E gets multiplied by gamma for a lorentz boost, the intensity should be reduced by gamma squared?

Can anyone fill in the dots? I'm interested to see whether photon number is actually conserved- if someone speeding away emits 10^10 photons at a certain wavelength over a finite period of time, does the stationary observer really see that same number? I don't think so. Photon numbers depend on choice of basis for hilbert spaces which can be done differently. This is part of the story behind spontaneous particle creation in Hawking radiation for example.

Related would be to do this for gravitational redshift.

 

[sysprog]

Perhaps its useful to think about this photon energy question in a simpler setting. Consider photons emitted from someone speeding away from you. They arrive at a different frequency, which can be calculated based on relativistic doppler formulas.

However, the intensity of the light is also influenced. I think since E gets multiplied by gamma for a lorentz boost, the intensity should be reduced by gamma squared?

Can anyone fill in the dots? I'm interested to see whether photon number is actually conserved- if someone speeding away emits 10^10 photons at a certain wavelength over a finite period of time, does the stationary observer really see that same number? I don't think so. Photon numbers depend on choice of basis for hilbert spaces which can be done differently. This is part of the story behind spontaneous particle creation in Hawking radiation for example.

Related would be to do this for gravitational redshift.

That meander does not serve to clarify. It's clear that there's an energy loss that is not fully accounted for merely by the accepted paradigms. Although I've stated that I think that the energy must go somewhere rather than nowhere, I confess that I think that I'm as much at a loss to explain exactly where, as are the proponents of nowhere to explain exactly how.

 

[phinds]

That meander does not serve to clarify. It's clear that there's an energy loss that is not fully accounted for merely by the accepted paradigms. Although I've stated that I think that the energy must go somewhere rather than nowhere, I confess that I think that I'm as much at a loss to explain exactly where, as are the proponents of nowhere to explain exactly how.

But there is no NEED to explain "how" since that question only arises if you insist on applying a local principle (conservation of energy) in a domain (large scale cosmological distances) where it does not apply.

 

[sysprog]

But there is no NEED to explain "how" since that question only arises if you insist on applying a local principle (conservation of energy) in a domain (large scale cosmological distances) where it does not apply.

If you insist that energy exits the universe, when all you can show is that it became no longer to you findable, while I insist that it must be somewhere, when all I can show is that historically, energy once reported as missing usually turns up somewhere else, I think it's at least as incumbent upon you to account for how energy leaves the universe, as it is on me to account for where it went.