this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
236 points (87.1% liked)
Showerthoughts
28927 readers
1467 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Posts must be original/unique
- Be good to others - no bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I did a bit of searching and the initial size you mention seems to be the initial size to which extrapolation is possible given information we have and that past that point it's unknowable?
the time with a hot QGP filing every bit of space is what things would look like immediately after the Inflationary Epoch, around t=10^32. The region of space that would eventually become the visible universe was maybe the size of an orange then. Inflation is often described as the "bang" in the Big Bang. Physics can describe the universe back to inflation very well, but before that things get less clear. Most think the four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces) were all one, at a temperature of 10^30 degrees, and things spread out and cooled until the gravity peeled off on its own. Things spread out and cooled a bit more and the strong force separated from the electroweak force. It may have been this transition that triggered cosmic inflation. Things spread out a lot more (by a factor of at least 10^26!), then stopped and returned to growing gently. That point in time is where the laws of physics are well-described, and testable in particle accelerators