Cosmology and the Origin of Life

Starting the Thermal Countdown: From the weird to the semi-understandable:

At very early times:

• Quantum Fluctuations should produce strange hadronic pairs all of which probably have decayed back into photons. However, this is a possibility that some very heavy particles created in this era still exist (source of "Dark Matter")? quarks were present the could not form a proton because the quarks can not be found together. Its the free quark episode and we don't understand what the physics would be.

Very early times are defined as follows:

Temp = 10³²; time = 10^-43 seconds

At this time Gravity and the Strong Force have the same magnitude. That is:

1/R² is very large because R is ridiculously small

This means:

• particle creation directly from the gravitational field
• particle size > Horizon (what does that mean?)
• all the energy of the Universe could have been in the form of one particle
• We don't understand any of this physics

At a slightly later time things are a bit more understandable:

Temp = 3x10¹⁵ ; time = 10^-11 seconds

At this time Gravity and the Strong force now have separated but the Weak force and the Electrostatic Force still have the same magnitude.

When these forces are decoupled the Universe is said to go through a phase transition. The symmetry is broken in a specific manner so that the forces have now separated and are defined by a characteristic ratio of their strengths. This defines the physics of our Universe.

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