While it is nearly impossible to say with certainty, the moments following the Big Bang will probably be unmatched in the universe. We do know that it featured the most energetic and transformative events that have ever Occurred.
A new study published on the preprint database arxiv on June 27 suggests that massive bubbles emerged and collided with each other, may have powering up colossal energies in the early universe. The researchers are calling these ultra-energetic, early universe structures as “bubbletrons.”
Four fundamental forces of nature
There are four fundamental forces of nature – electromagnetism, strong nuclear, weak nuclear and gravity. These, however, aren’t always different and they tend to merge at high energies. Powerful particle colliders have already detected electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force merging into a “electroweak” force.
Even though there is no proof, physicists suspect that all forces could merge into a single, unified force at extremely high energies. The only time the universe had such energies, however, was in the moments after the Big Bang. The splitting of the forces from those instances might have either been serene and smooth, or incredibly violent.
Extraordinary amounts of energy
This research suggests that if the transitions had indeed been violent, then the universe could have been filled with gigantic bubbles, only briefly. Before eventually colliding, expanding and converting the universe into the new reality, these bubbles would have carried extraordinary amounts of energy. According to the researchers, the bubbletrons could have in fact reached the energies required to trigger the formation of hypothetical dark matter. The researchers also discovered that the expansion and collision of these bubbletrons would have created gravitational waves capable of persisting till this day.
A recent research has already expressed that our universe is flooded with a background hum of gravitational waves. Even though most of these are likely due to supermassive black holes colliding, some might be a result of other processes in the early universe, including the creation and distortion of bubbletrons. Future analysis and upcoming gravitational wave detectors might be able to provide evidence for the existence of bubbletrons.
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