Expert: Tom Whiting - 4/2/2009

Question
QUESTION: Hi.
after the bang the energy and mass were released (skip to we have protons) i am not really sure what's before and it isn't related to my question so do you know how did the proton and the electron combined together to becomes hydrogen to form the stars? i mean how did the first atom get shaped?

ANSWER: Hi Hamad,
By definition, a bare proton IS A hydrogen nuclei.  So all it's missing to become a neutral hydrogen "atom" is to capture a single
electron.
But right after the Big Bang, the temperature was way too hot
(energy and particles were moving way too fast for our friendly
positively charged proton to capture a negatively charged electron.)

So the early Universe had to wait a while... expand and cool down from the trillions of degrees temperature.  (when a gas expands, it cools....just like letting air out of a rubber tire).
It took nearly 400,000 years for the Early, new Universe to cool down to below about a thousand degrees so that these elementary particles could capture one another, so the protons (Hydrogen nuclei)
could capture a passing electron, to be come a neutral "atom" of hydrogen. Which still later fueled the stars.

Prior to this electron capture, the entire Universe was opaque
because it was all ionized gas and energy.
But at about the 380,000 year point, electron capture by the protons could begin, and the Universe changed from opaque to transparent.
And that's the remnant light we see with our radio telescopes in the
microwave portion of the radio spectrum, the Cosmic Background
Radiation (CBR) when electron capture occurred and the early Universe was transformed from all hot ions and energy,
to cooler...neutral atoms of hydrogen gas....(and helium gas).
Which still later combined to form the initial stara about few million years later.
So it's not really complicated, it just.....common sense.
But it did take us a while to figure it all out....(His methods
are well hidden and it takes a while to figure it all out.)
What's the phrase by Einstein? God not only rolls the dice, sometimes
He HIDES the dice.   ....(black holes, dark matter, dark energy, etc).
Clear Skies,
Tom

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: (i didnt want to make anew question since this is also about the formation of the universe)
as i remember from what you said matter and anti matter were created as the same time after the bang right so if anti matter is the complete opposite of matter why didnt we have 50:50 matter:anti matter and had all energy?? i mean why did the matter beat the anti matter?

Answer
Hi Hamad,
One of the unanswered questions still to be determined in cosmology....how was there a very slight excess of one matter form
over the other.  Of course, if it had been the other way around,
we would be speaking of negative protons and positive electrons....
as our "normal" matter, and....the other one would have been
designated  "anti-matter"....right??

It may have to do with the idea that our regular matter is just a tad
more physically and atomically stable, (due to direction of spin
characteristics) than anti-matter, so after all the anti-matter was annihilated by regular matter, there was just a slight excess of our normal matter.  We don't know how or why as yet.  But obviously it happened, because our Universe (and us) are here, as regular matter.

Another idea might be....was due to the rapid nearly instant huge inflationary period of space, some anti-matter was just too distant from the remaining regular matter....to get annihilated...so that means there may still be some anti-matter...still hanging around way out there somewhere, just waiting for some regular matter to arrive.
We just don't know.  As Mr. Spock once said on an old TV Startrek episode, "Even science cannot know the complete unknown."
Clear skies,
tom