Exploring the First Microsecond of the Cosmos - The Cosmic Companion May 28, 2021
Waiter! My quark-gluon soup is watery!
The first microsecond of the Cosmos was filled with a weird quark-gluon plasma soup. Turns out, things may have been weirder than that.
During the instant after the Big Bang, matter as we know it did not exist — the Cosmos was filled with a soup of subatomic particles. Astronomers and astrophysicists are now able to piece together large pieces of the history of the early Universe. But, significant questions remain concerning the processes by which energy transformed to a weird quark-gluon plasma, eventually forming stars and planets and galaxies.
Researchers from University of Copenhagen set out to better-understand the nature of this quark-gluon plasma (QGP). (Quarks are the constituent pieces of protons and neutrons at the center of atoms, while gluons hold them together.)
“First the plasma that consisted of quarks and gluons was separated by the hot expansion of the universe. Then the pieces of quark reformed into so-called hadrons. A hadron with three quarks makes a proton, which is part of atomic cores. These cores are the building blocks that constitutes earth, ourselves and the universe that surrounds us,” You Zhou, Associate Professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, explains.
Read more: https://thecosmiccompanion.net/exploring-the-first-microsecond-of-the-cosmos
Upcoming guests on Astronomy News with The Cosmic Companion
June 1 (s4/e22): Using computer modeling to peer inside the atmosphere of Saturn with Dr. Sabine Stanley of Johns Hopkins University.
June 8 (s4/e23): Dr. Bruce Betts, Chief Scientist and LightSail Program Manager for The Planetary Society
June 15 (s4/e24): ~just added~ Dr. Noah Petro, NASA’s Project Scientist for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), talking about the Moon!
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