The First Ten Million Millennia or So Don L. Anderson

Citation: Phys. Today 52(1), 49 (1999); doi: 10.1063/1.882571 View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.882571 View Table of Contents: http://www.physicstoday.org/resource/1/PHTOAD/v52/i1 Published by the American Institute of Physics.

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Downloaded 08 Oct 2012 to 131.215.71.79. Redistribution subject to AIP license or copyright; see http://www.physicstoday.org/about_us/terms THE FIRST TEN MILLION MILLENNIA OR SO Don L. Anderson

In the "beginning," nothing Helium 4! No time, no space, no matter. 3 billion degrees or more. |No energy, no strings A helium universe fnothing three minutes gone. not even a point, not even a void Aeons more to go nothing before the Rest.

aws of physics A Quantum world. The Dreams that Stuff are made of. myths, no gods; 4 minutes into it nothing, absolutely nothing mostly light, photons swarm; electrons, positrons annihilate Then, a singularity . . . positrons gone. Call it a bang, call it a Big Bang, call it light, call it God. A proton-electron world Perhaps a thought. of ghostly neutrinos and their ami's. In the beginning, the Laws of Logic begat the Laws of Physics. The rules. Lots of light, but no where to go; opaque. From Nothing, expansion, Universe rests at helium, false vacuums, phase changes, beginning of time, and space. but time goes on, Potential for something, Everything. cooling the first millennium, Energy, potential. space expanding, Waves, strings; great attractors, vibrating strings gravity. monopoles, sheets, threads webs. Still opaque 300 000 years From the void, chaos 3000 degrees out of vacuum, Genesis. electrons and protons Condensation, knots, hydrogen and photons cosmic freezing, atoms wrinkles in time, defects, domains, protons and electrons unite Bubbles, foams. A detergent universe. mate. Strong force, weak force, symmetry breaking; machos, wimps, Create, annihilate tubes of energy, gigantic loops. create, annihilate A pasta universe. cooling universe, changing color.

Plasma mist, quarks, gluons, muons In the beginning, lurid gamma, off the spectral scale; nuclei, electrons shades to x-ray protons fades to UV, then violet and blue collisions, bouncing 3000 degrees, yellow. binding Deuteronomy. Visible matter, not the half of it, Add neutrons- dark matter, the cosmic glue . . . Tritium; dark invisible matter, holds the cosmos together plus proton, Transmutation! not baryonic Helium 3, Alchemy. but what? Tritium swallows proton gravitino, photino, axion faith?

© 1999 American Institute of Physics, S-0031-9228-9901-040-6 JANUARY 1999 PHYSICS TODAY 49

Downloaded 08 Oct 2012 to 131.215.71.79. Redistribution subject to AIP license or copyright; see http://www.physicstoday.org/about_us/terms Invisible dark matter Movie Stars and railway cars closes the universe blown to a distant eddy gas and dust and that. Clumps. a new congealing gas-dust cloud, on the edge of a spiral, Then, The Stellar Delivery Room gravity attracts The crucibles of elements, the tometals." rotation shapes Mostly nothing, a few dense spots, knots and eddies patches made of "less nothing" a central star seed in a spider web of strings, ignites, lights galaxies driving off its dust. clusters of galaxies, 150 million years into it. A disk a gassy ring Translucency; condensing, cooling light moves off. Ice at edges. Dense clumps In bulbous middle nebular womb gas balls grow, globules embryos The Giant Gods of Legend Star birth! Here and there. Jovial, Neptunian, Saturnalia. Condensing, collapsing, heating. Uranian.

Hydrogen, helium fuse Fe and Ni to dense cores of embryo planets, proto Earth 150 million years into it Then rocks, oxygen, silicon, aluminum Matter everywhere, Energy (kinetic) A growing world, Flat whirling disks Dante's Inferno, layer by layer. Black holes The Whole Shebang Earth emerges, Gaea Quasars Bright it gleams, molten, Ellipticals heated by energy within and without Spirals Uranus and Thor's Daughters, Alpha and Beta, Space, flat and isotropic and clumpy, And stoned by Jove and Oort, burning stars Pebbles from space. the Philosophers' Stones hydrogen coal to helium gas A hot birth helium coal volatiles boiled off, gone carbon coal blown away by sunlight coal coal rarely, giant impacts real coal for middle-aged stars. towering walls of ejected lava, liquid craters Silicon cores magma oceans Finally, iron Dante's nightmare The end of the road. violent rebirths, Begin again.

Superstars Time . . . Collapse, rebound cooling, congealing Supernova! . . . heals all rafts of rock, floating under All the rows and columns of Mendeleev's Table a moonless sky. Periodic. a cinder, healing, Stable, unstable. a cooling lump. Scattered to space. A lonely sky.

The stuff of fable Another world, passing by two millennia ago, at 3 BC Perturbed, no doubt, closes in a beacon in the east. smashes, crashes, splashes molten mantle to orbit. A moon made out of Earth Cobalt, nickel, xenon drying out our planet, strontium, platinum, uranium and the rest already bone dry. blasted to space Stuff of Stars. Building blocks of us All gases, long gone; never there.

50 JANUARY 1999 PHYSICS TODAY

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