View Single Post
  #28  
Old 07-23-2007, 12:50 PM
Gugel Gugel is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Charlottesville, VA
Posts: 1,029
Default Re: Ask Gugel Anything About the Big Bang

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Just after the big bang were the laws of nature different than what we think of them today?

[/ QUOTE ]

There are four known forces that are responsible for the Universe as we know it: Strong Interaction, Electromagnetism, Weak Interaction, and Gravity. On a side note, the strong interaction is what holds atoms together. With the electromagnetic force, you would think protons would repel each other since they are all positively charged. When the protons are extremely close to each other, however, the strong force kicks in and binds them. It is much, much stronger than electromagnetism.

Anyway, at high enough temperatures, these forces unify. Since the Universe at some point was infinitely hot, these forces were unified. Gravity was the first to separate, followed by the strong interaction, and finally by a decoupling of the electromagnetic force and the weak interaction.

In short, the laws of physics were completely different immediately following the Big Bang. Gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak force were the same thing.

[/ QUOTE ]

Source?

[/ QUOTE ]

The unification of electromagnetism with the weak force has been experimentally achieved on Earth (the physicists that did this got the '79 Noble prize). You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroweak_theory

There is also strong evidence suggesting a grand unified theory where the strong force will be unified with the electroweak force. It requires much more energy (10^12 more energy in fact) than uniting the electromagnetic and weak force. If three of the forces are united at high energy, it seems likely that the last force, gravity, would be united too at some even higher energy level. The unification of gravity with the rest of the three forces is suspected, but not well supported.
Reply With Quote