Can elementary particles divide any further?

[MarkE]

I’ve always been skeptical about the idea that all the particles in the universe were always present, but were once confined into a very small place, which then supposedly gave rise to the Big Bang. It’s as if supporters of this idea can’t seem to leave Fred Hoyle's ‘static universe’ hypothesis, by continuing to assume that there is this fixed, unchanging amount of particles in the universe.

The opposite of this idea is of course that the universe went from 1 to 2 particles, and eventually lead to the vast amount of matter and energy we have today. The total number of particles in the visible universe is estimated to be 3,3 x 10^88.

Well, living organisms evolve by stem cells that start dividing (asexually), so from the perspective, it might be possible that particles/fields “evolved” from 1 initial field as well, which they all shared. Not a LUCA: Last Universal Common Ancestor, but rather a LUCF: Last Universal Common Field), instead of that all the fields have always been in existence, from the beginning, and never developed, they just were there, always. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

For instance, it is known that electromagnetism, and weak force share, both share the elekctroweak. From the observed running of the coupling constants, it is believed they all converge to a single value at very high energies, and there are hints of a ‘grand unification’ with the strong force.
(Source: book: 'Einstein's Monsters').

But I’m not making this thread to speculate about this hypothesis. It’s an interesting idea, but a philosophy, and nothing more than that. I’d like to ask a specific question to rule out a possible mechanism behind it. I’d like to ask a specific question regarding this hypothesis, in order to find out whether the hypothesis is credible or not.

Due to high temperature photons had enough energy to create electron-positron pairs. Photons may have enough energy to create electron-positron pairs. At high energies, a photon, 1 particle, can make 2 particles. If exceeding the 1 MeV of energy and when inreracting with the nuclear strong electric field. Well, 1 photon has 0 charge, and an electron (e-) and a positron (e+) together make up 0 net charge as well. This made me think about the following: if this hypothesis is correct, how then did more particles arise after this primitive state, by e- or e+ splitting again into 2 more particles, giving a total of 4? How to go from 2 particles to billions of particles?

For this, I’d like to share Ernest Sternglass’s ideas:
Sternglass wrote the book Before the Big Bang: the Origins of the Universe, in which he offers an argument for the Lemaître theory of the primeval atom. He offers technical data showing the plausibility of an original super massive relativistic electron-positron pair. This particle contained the entire mass of the universe and through a series of 270 divisions created everything that now exists. If true, this would help ameliorate some of the problems with the current models, namely inflation and black hole singularities.

Sternglass, it should be emphasized, was a serious physicist, not a crank, but his theory has never been adopted and has probably never been tested enough to be absolutely sure that it is incorrect. Like Lemaître, Sternglass imagined starting from a single "primeval atom,” but Sternglass was able to build on his more advanced knowledge of relativity and quantum theory to make this incredibly massive particle out of what would normally be two almost unnoticeable particles: an electron and its anti-matter equivalent, a positron.
Sternglass imagined these two particles forming a sort of primitive atom, with the electron and the positron orbiting each other at very high relativistic velocities, producing a single particle with incredibly high mass. This particle would then split to produce two superparticles, still vastly massive; they would split again, and so on, rather as a single cell splits again and again to make a human fetus. Some of the early splits of the universal primal cell would be responsible for the galactic clusters and galaxies we see now; later ones would produce the apparently fundamental particles with which we are now familiar.
Sternglass even imagined some delayed mini-Big Bangs resulting from the splits that would produce vast bursts of gamma rays, a phenomenon that has been observed in distant time and space. This theory has the benefit over many others of being intensely simple. It's back to having really basic building blocks from which everything else eventually evolves. It should be stressed, however, that although it was simple it was not simplistic. This was not like a nonscientist thinking, "Hey, everything must have come from a simple pair of particles at the start." Sternglass based his ideas on good physics, and up to the mid-1990s when he last worked on it, the theory was consistent with both physical theory and observed cosmological data.
Sternglass' ideas have not been taken forward. They were probably a dead end. And he offered no explanation for where the high-energy electron/positron pair came from in the beginning.
(Source: book: 'Before the Big Bang')

Alan Guth then came along with his ‘inflation’ theory. But I’m not sure whether these two hypotheses are mutually exclusive or not.
When inflation ends the temperature returns to the pre-inflationary temperature; this is called ‘reheating’ or thermalization because the large potential energy of the inflaton field decays into particles and fills the Universe with Standard Model particles.
If you start by inflation, expand by a huge amount, finally reached this smoothed out early universe with lots of dark energy still in it, this dark energy needs to go away, so it converts into ordinary matter and radiation, a process called ‘reheating’. Scientists come up with ‘fields’ that would have given us this early dark energy, and the physics of these fields is like that of a particle that decays. So the quantum field that was responsible for inflation dacays into matter/energy, and then they decay and interact again, turning into a hot dense gas, rapidly expanding. That’s what you would get, with this theory. In other words: that process looks a lot like our Big Bang.
The decay/conversion of dark energy into matter and radiation is ‘reheating’. So for instance 90% of that region reheats, those are probabilities. So that 10% keeps inflating, so even though the rest of the universe is still expanding, it’s decelerating  it’s slowing down, now it’s matter and radiation and for that 10%, which did not turn into ordinary matter, inflation keeps going so the size of that universe expands much more quickly, and after a certain period of time, 90% of that region can reheat, and 10% keeps inflating and then again keeps growing. So you keep creating more and more regions of space where inflation is still going on. Inflation never ends. This is called ‘eternal inflation’. Which is the simplest way of getting a multiverse. Alan Guth called them ‘pocket universes’.
(Source: TTC lectures series 'Mysteries of Modern Physics: Time', lecture 22)

So my question is in regards to Sternglass’s ideas, the scientific part, which could support such an hypothesis:

1) Could it be possible that the universe started by simple + and - charges, from 2 matter and antimatter particles, which then split into more particles, which eventually lead to all the particles in the universe?

2) And if there is some credibility behind Sternglass's ideas, is this theory compatible with the inflation theory of Alan Guth, or are they mutually exclusive?

3) What would be the mechanism behind an electron or positron dividing, because, aren't they supposed to be elementary particles that cannot divide any further?
I'm especially interested in Sternglass's logical reasoning behind this part, I wrote earlier:
"This particle would then split to produce two superparticles, still vastly massive; they would split again, and so on, rather as a single cell splits again and again to make a human fetus. Some of the early splits of the universal primal cell would be responsible for the galactic clusters and galaxies we see now; later ones would produce the apparently fundamental particles with which we are now familiar".
Interesting, but how? Can anybody explain to me how Sternglass actually scientifically explained this mechanism?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

Edited October 29, 2020 by MarkE

[studiot]

27 minutes ago, MarkE said:

with the electron and the positron orbiting each other at very high relativistic velocities

I'm having difficulty understandiing what you mean by this  ?

 

 

[MarkE]

9 minutes ago, studiot said:

I'm having difficulty understandiing what you mean by this  ?

Those are the author's words.

[studiot]

15 minutes ago, MarkE said:

Those are the author's words.

 

But you posted it here so you are responsible for explaining it here.

You also praised Sternglass, whose words I assume you understood.

I am simply asking what (you think) is meant by them.

Since I don't know what is meant I can't say whether I think that is right or wrong or possible or not.

Sorry but those are the rules here.

Edited October 29, 2020 by studiot

[swansont]

47 minutes ago, MarkE said:

I’ve always been skeptical about the idea that all the particles in the universe were always present, but were once confined into a very small place, which then supposedly gave rise to the Big Bang.

Perhaps it’s because that’s not what the model proposes. You’ve even linked to pages that discuss the creation of particles

Quote

It’s as if supporters of this idea can’t seem to leave Fred Hoyle's ‘static universe’ hypothesis, by continuing to assume that there is this fixed, unchanging amount of particles in the universe.

Not what physics claims.

 

 

11 minutes ago, MarkE said:

Those are the author's words.

Perhaps you could link to the statement (and its support) and not the author’s wikipedia page

[Bufofrog]

41 minutes ago, MarkE said:

I’ve always been skeptical about the idea that all the particles in the universe were always present, but were once confined into a very small place, which then supposedly gave rise to the Big Bang.

There is no theory I know of that even postulates that.

Cross posted with Swansont.

Edited October 29, 2020 by Bufofrog

[MarkE]

 

39 minutes ago, studiot said:

You also praised Sternglass, whose words I assume you understood.

I don't praise him, not yet at least. I just learned about this hypothesis, so I was wondering whether people on this forum might know about it already, and in that case, could tell me whether they are supporters of it, or not. I wasn't expecting that people here weren't acquainted with it already.

36 minutes ago, swansont said:

Perhaps you could link to the statement and not the author’s wikipedia page

I'm not sure what you mean, or what you're looking for. The author doesn't make the statement, he writes about a statement made by somebody else, by the physicist, who wrote an entire book about his theory. I didn't read that book, I only read the book about somebody else who wrote about it. I'm trying to find out whether I should read it or not. Would you? His theory is pretty old, so perhaps it has been debunked, already? That's why I came to this forum, to find out whether there's already support for it, or not.

37 minutes ago, Bufofrog said:

There is no theory I know of that even postulates that.

"The Big Bang hypothesis states that all of the current and past matter in the Universe came into existence at the same time, roughly 13.8 billion years ago. At this time, all matter was compacted into a very small ball with infinite density and intense heat called a Singularity. Suddenly, the Singularity began expanding, and the universe as we know it began".

That's very close to my "were once confined into a very small place", don't you think?

 

The interesting part about Sternglass's ideas is that his simple model for the origin of the universe is now supported by recent astronomical observations by other researchers. Sternglass' electron-pair model explains the repulsion as centrifugal force from the enormous rotational energy in the original electron-positron pair. In the new model, every system rotates and expands until it reaches an equilibrium between the centrifugal force and gravity, as in the case of the planets rotating about the Sun. According to this model, the universe will reach a maximum size 200 times its present radius and will neither fly apart into dead ashes, nor collapse into a fiery point, allowing life to continue forever.

Another recent discovery that supports Sternglass's theory is the finding by the Hubble Space Telescope that the most distant galaxies are small, spherical and surprisingly well organized and not large and diffuse as would be expected in a slow process of random condensation from a uniform cloud of gas.

Because the theory allows one to calculate the strength of the gravitational force from the electron's mass, charge, spin and maximum velocity with which it can move, it unifies the description of nature along the lines Einstein had encouraged Sternglass to pursue as a young man.
(Source: University of Pittsburgh)

All of this make it very tempting to actually go read the book, and dive into this theory. But first I'm wondering whether anybody here shares my interest in Sternglass's theory, or not.

Edited October 29, 2020 by MarkE

[MigL]

I have to wonder, then, how did other elementary particles, like the Quark colors and Neutrino flavors, come about ?
They are certainly not 'made up' of Electrons and Positrons; and the current Big Bang/Standard model explains their origin fairly well.
( except for a few inconsistencies which may have something to do with the fundamental nature of quantum particles, such as matter/antimatter asymmetry, dark matter, Neutrino oscillations and strong CP problem )

[joigus]

I will bee looking into this more closely later, and see if I can add anything significant, but first off I'd like to tell you about what seems to be a misconception in what you say in your question. Elementary particles are not like tinker-toy assemblies from which you can split the parts. They are instantiations of one basic thing, say the electron, of which you can obtain more and more copies by providing the necessary energy (2\( mc^2 \), with the electron mass.) By doing so, you produce particle-antiparticle pairs of the given kind.

The universe before the big bang (following the standard inflationary model) had particle number zero. So, as others (Swansont, Bufofrog) say, no. This would not be the picture:

2 hours ago, MarkE said:

I’ve always been skeptical about the idea that all the particles in the universe were always present, but were once confined into a very small place, which then supposedly gave rise to the Big Bang.

Connecting with MigL's comments, all the fields must have to have been there (flavours, colours,...), but with zero expected value for the number of particles or antiparticles.

  

36 minutes ago, MigL said:

I have to wonder, then, how did other elementary particles, like the Quark colors and Neutrino flavors, come about ?

This, in turn, connects with the very interesting question of "did the laws themselves appear at the moment previous to the bang, or were they already there?" Lee Smolin is one of the most notable proponents of this question.

The electron-positron state that you talked about is called the positronium. It's very short lived. I don't think it lives long enough on average to produce relativistic velocities.

Edited October 29, 2020 by joigus

[dimreepr]

22 minutes ago, joigus said:

"did the laws themselves appear at the moment previous to the bang, or were they already there?" Lee Smolin is one of the most notable proponents of this question.

Fundamental is an important question.

[swansont]

1 hour ago, MarkE said:

 

I'm not sure what you mean, or what you're looking for. The author doesn't make the statement, he writes about a statement made by somebody else, by the physicist, who wrote an entire book about his theory. I didn't read that book, I only read the book about somebody else who wrote about it. I'm trying to find out whether I should read it or not. Would you? His theory is pretty old, so perhaps it has been debunked, already? That's why I came to this forum, to find out whether there's already support for it, or not.

studiot asked for clarification of a physics statement. I think they would like to hear about the physics. I would, too. What you posted doesn’t read like you’re seeking a book recommendation 

 

1 hour ago, MarkE said:

"The Big Bang hypothesis states that all of the current and past matter in the Universe came into existence at the same time, roughly 13.8 billion years ago. At this time, all matter was compacted into a very small ball with infinite density and intense heat called a Singularity. Suddenly, the Singularity began expanding, and the universe as we know it began".

That's very close to my "were once confined into a very small place", don't you think?

It’s a crappy description and contradicted by the explanation that follows it.

 

 

[Markus Hanke]

20 hours ago, MarkE said:

Sternglass imagined these two particles forming a sort of primitive atom, with the electron and the positron orbiting each other at very high relativistic velocities, producing a single particle with incredibly high mass. This particle would then split to produce two superparticles, still vastly massive; they would split again, and so on, rather as a single cell splits again and again to make a human fetus. Some of the early splits of the universal primal cell would be responsible for the galactic clusters and galaxies we see now; later ones would produce the apparently fundamental particles with which we are now familiar.

None of this makes any sense in light of what we know already.

First of all, “particles” are not fundamental to reality, they are just excitations of the respective underlying quantum fields (which are the fundamental entities here) - so there is not even any problem to be solved, since the only difference between having one particle of a kind, and many particles of the same kind, is the mode of excitation of the same underlying field. There is no such thing as a gazillion electrons in this universe - there is, and always has been, only one electron field, with the appropriate local excitations. This is well understood, and not an issue.

Secondly, “number of particles in a region of spacetime” is not an absolute thing, it is an observer-dependent quantity; this does not seem to be accounted for here.

Thirdly, prior to electroweak symmetry breaking, the Higgs mechanism wasn’t in existence yet, so at the early stages of the universe’s evolution all particles would have been massless and thus moving at the speed of light. This precludes the existence of vastly massive “super particles” that are somehow orbiting one another. Again, this is well known and understood. 

So essentially, this author (whom I have never heard of) attempts to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, in ways that are contradictory to already known physics. Yes, there are problems left to be solved in modern cosmology, but this here isn’t a viable approach.

[MarkE]

@Markus Hanke  If you’re acknowledging that...

On 10/30/2020 at 10:09 AM, Markus Hanke said:

...there is, and always has been, only one electron field,

then what you’re saying is that this electron field was already present at the moment of the Big Bang, right? Well, right now, billions of years later, there are multiple, but different, fields (electromagnetic field, weak/strong gauge field, Higgs field etc). So at some point, something evidently changed to this initial field.
So are you implying then that all fields came from one field, which they all once shared?

If so, why then is it so far-fetched to suggest that this first field was like the nature of a photon, since it has no charge, and no mass, since you said yourself that:

On 10/30/2020 at 10:09 AM, Markus Hanke said:

at the early stages of the universe’s evolution all particles would have been massless and thus moving at the speed of light,

but then, at some point, this initial field differentiated, and gave rise to two opposite charged excitations, just like the nature of the electron and the positron?
Sternglass simply continues from this newly acquired state of the universe, after pair production, by arguing that it occurred over and over again.

Why can't that be right? What's a more plausible alternative?

Edited November 2, 2020 by MarkE

[Markus Hanke]

1 hour ago, MarkE said:

then what you’re saying is that this electron field was already present at the moment of the Big Bang, right?

Since we have neither an established GUT nor model of quantum gravity (although there are various candidate models for both), we cannot at present tell what happened at the moment of the Big Bang itself. Our established models start being valid at around 10^-35s after the Big Bang - anything before that is hypothesis and conjecture at the moment.

1 hour ago, MarkE said:

So are you implying then that all fields came from one field, which they all once shared?

This is a distinct possibility, but it is not something we can - based on what is known at present - either confirm or rule out. Presently available data does seem to point towards this having been the case at some point (this would be called a GUT).

1 hour ago, MarkE said:

So at some point, something evidently changed to this initial field.

Sure, it's a process known as spontaneous symmetry breaking. It's happened at the very least twice, probably more often.

1 hour ago, MarkE said:

If so, why then is it so far-fetched to suggest that this first field was like the nature of a photon, since it has no charge, and no mass

I hadn't mentioned charge in my original response. Anyway, charges of various kinds (electric, colour, isospin etc) arise from gauge symmetries of the field in question, so again they would come into being through symmetry breaking processes. Mass arises via the Higgs mechanism, so it only comes into play after the electroweak epoch.
As to what specifically a GUT will look like - the jury is still out on this. There is quite a number of candidate models at the moment, and no real way to tell which (if any) would apply to our universe.

1 hour ago, MarkE said:

this initial field differentiated, and gave rise to two opposite charged excitations, just like the nature of the electron and the positron?

Particles and their anti-particle counterparts aren't modes of excitation, they are separate and distinct fields. As mentioned above, charges (not just electric, but all types) arise from symmetry considerations.

1 hour ago, MarkE said:

Why can't that be right? What's a more plausible alternative?

The Standard Model - even though it is evidently incomplete, and only an effective field theory of some more general underlying model - does a really good job in modelling the evolution of the universe from about 10^-35s or so onwards. Crucially, it has been thoroughly tested up to energies of a few ~TeV, so we know that it is a good and valid (albeit limited) model. It already explains how most of the particles we can observe today come into being, along with the necessary mathematical framework. It is all quite plausible. 

[MarkE]

On 11/2/2020 at 1:16 PM, Markus Hanke said:

Our established models start being valid at around 10^-35s after the Big Bang - anything before that is hypothesis and conjecture at the moment

Why are you ruling out Sternglass's hypothesis, then?

He describes a possible mechanism immediately after the Big Bang, referring to the time before 10^-35s after the Big Bang, since you don't seem to have a more plausible alternative? I'm trying to follow your line of reasoning, which is why I'm asking.

As you know, the universe began in a hot, dense state, with a low entropy. Well, one initial photon-like particle (without any space in between, only this particle, and nothing else), seems pretty low entropy to me. In fact, it doesn't go any lower than that. Why doesn't it sound plausible to you that, at some point, space began to expand, which is compatible with that photon-like particle starting to divide, over and over again, just like Sternglass argues. 

I'm not saying it has to be true because it makes sense, I'd like to know why it does not make sense to you. I don't see how this is inconsistent with our current models. You said:

On 10/30/2020 at 10:09 AM, Markus Hanke said:

None of this makes any sense in light of what we know already.

But Sternglass's hypothesis is not replacing any other theory or hypothesis. It's not an either-or case. His mechanism describes an event which occurred before the things we already know, even before the CMBR, the "echo" of the Big Bang, energy of microwaves by the red-shift effect of the expanding universe, at around the age of 370,000 years, no remnants of the Big Bang itself before 370,000 years ago. 

So, the way I see it, is that they're not mutually exclusive, it's a both-and case, and Sternglass's could be an addition to our current knowledge, as an explanation for the what happened immediately after the Big Bang. Or are they mutually exclusive? If they are, can you please explain to me why, because I don't understand it. I would really like to follow your line of reasoning.

Edited November 4, 2020 by MarkE

[swansont]

Since you are defending this hypothesis, can we now revisit the claim

"Sternglass imagined these two particles forming a sort of primitive atom, with the electron and the positron orbiting each other at very high relativistic velocities, producing a single particle with incredibly high mass."

and discuss how this would be possible?

[Markus Hanke]

16 hours ago, MarkE said:

Well, one initial photon-like particle (without any space in between, only this particle, and nothing else)

This is not what you originally described in your first post - you were talking about a supermassive electron-positron pair at relativistic velocities.

16 hours ago, MarkE said:

I'm not saying it has to be true because it makes sense, I'd like to know why it does not make sense to you.

Again, you were originally talking about a pair of supermassive particles 'orbiting' one another at relativistic velocities, which is most definitely not a possibility prior to 10^-35s, which is why the concept doesn't make sense. My comments were based on that opening post. 

Also, even at or after 10^-35s, such a concept is still not a possibility, since it is not compatible with the known Standard Model. So I'm not sure what is really being suggested here.

If you wish to instead discuss a unified quantum field prior to 10^-35s, then you need to suggest what kind of symmetry group such a field would have, and how that symmetry group would be broken to yield the known Standard Model. Such a mechanism is conceivably possible, and the idea of a unified field theory has been pursued since the Standard Model first came to be developed. But without any specifics, we can't really discuss this any further.

16 hours ago, MarkE said:

So, the way I see it, is that they're not mutually exclusive, it's a both-and case, and Sternglass's could be an addition to our current knowledge, as an explanation for the what happened immediately after the Big Bang. Or are they mutually exclusive? If they are, can you please explain to me why, because I don't understand it. I would really like to follow your line of reasoning.

It's perfectly fine to suggest an extension to the Standard Model that would cover the period prior to 10^-35s - however, such an extension must yield the already known Standard Model at the appropriate energies, and must of course be mathematically self-consistent. Note that it is up to you to present such a model (a general hand-wavey idea is not a model), and show that it indeed does what you say it does; because I certainly can't see how you obtain a SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) quantum field theory with the required properties from an electron-positron pair. That's why at present it doesn't make sense to me.