Much about the early universe stays a mystery to many. However, a research team found that gravitational waves might provide the key to understanding why the unthinkable colossal event called Big Bang that seeded the universe, produced more matter than antimatter.
Meaning, according to an Interesting Engineering report, the decade ahead could "reveal some of the most important questions about the universe."
Humans exist because at one undescribed moment in the history of the universe's first second, more matter than anti-matter was produced.
The former is literally everything one has ever seen, touched, and known, even in the farthest reaches of space. This symmetry is so immense that only a single extra particle of antimatter was produced for every 10 billion particles of matter.
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Researchers discovered that gravitational waves might provide the key to understanding the reason the unthinkable colossal event called the Big Bang that seeded the universe, produced more matter than antimatter.
Asymmetric Distribution of Matter Vs Antimatter
The problem is that, even with such an imbalance, present theories of physics do not have an explanation.
The currently available theories propose that matter and antimatter should have been made in equal numbers. However, the persistence of Earth, humans, and all things in the universe emphasize the need for more wide-ranging, unknown physics.
As indicated in this research, one promising notion that many researchers have hypothesized is that this asymmetry is an "outcome of the post-inflation conditions of the young universe," when everything was going through a mid-meltingly quick expansion.
If this is the case, a so-called "field-blob" might have overextended beyond observable horizons to develop and fragment in a manner appropriate for the creation of an uneven delivery of matter vs antimatter.
There is a catch to this theory and that is quite difficult to verify, even with the world's largest particle accelerators, since the essential energy is billions to trillions of times higher, compared to what simple humans can create thus far.
'Q-Ball Decay'
The researchers involved in the study might have found a way around it such difficulty invalidation. Using the "Q-balls" field, the study authors are planning to analyze the said popular hypothesis of a quickly-expanding early universe that results in asymmetry.
In the research published in the Physical Review Letters journal, the study authors described Q-balls as "not simple," although they are much similar to bosons or the Higgs boson.
According to Kavli IPMU project researcher Graham White, the study's lead author, "a Higgs particle is present" when the Higgs field is excited. However, he added, it can do other things like "form a lump."
The lead author continued, if one has a field that is very similar to the Higgs field although it has some kind of a charge, not an electric one, then, one lump has the charge as a single particle. More so, since the charge cannot just vanish, the field needs to decide to be either in particles or lumps, TechGZ said in a similar report.
Lumps Coagulate Together to Form a Q-Ball
White also explained, if it is lower energy to be in lumps than particles, the field then will do that. He added that a bunch of lumps that coagulate together will form a Q-ball.
Along with his colleagues, White contended that these Q-balls or blobs of fields stay for some time, and then, dilute slower compared to the "background soup of radiation" as there occurs an expansion of the universe, eventually, most of the universe's energy is in these blobs.
In the meantime, minor instabilities in the group of radiation's density begin to grow when the blobs take over.
And when the Q-balls go through decay, it occurs rapidly that the resulting variations in the background plasma get converted into violent soundwaves, creating "spectacular ripples in space and time," which are called gravitational waves that could be identified over a few decades ahead, explained White.
Meaning, advancing the investigation of gravitational waves is bringing researchers closer to the very early universe's conditions. More so, it could have an answer to the standing disproportionateness between matter and antimatter.
Related information about why there is more matter than antimatter is shown on Newsy's YouTube video below:
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