Science_Illustrated_Australia_-_Issue70_2019

Phase transition

Right after the Big Bang, the

Higgs field gave mass to matter

One trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, the Higgs field provided both matter and

antimatter with mass. Physicists aim to recreate the moment in which the field originated,

to understand why antiparticles lost the battle and all known galaxies consist of matter.

The universe grows

1

After the Big Bang,

the inflation begins,

in which the newborn

universe expands faster than

the speed of light. When the

inflation stops one trillionth of

a second after the Big Bang,

the energy from the expansion

is included in a phase

transition that produces the

universe’s primordial soup.

The Higgs field

is activated

2

The phase transition

activates the Higgs

field throughout the

universe, which is the size of a

football. The field immediately

gives mass to quarks and their

antiparticles (antiquarks)

which make up the primordial

soup, together with massless

force carriers (gluons). When

quarks and antiquarks collide,

they destroy each other.

Matter beats

antimatter

3

If the phase

transition is intense,

it causes instability,

producing more quarks than

antiquarks. Gluons connect

the surplus quarks by threes

in protons and neutrons,

which become atoms and

galaxies. Reactions between

Higgs boson pairs may now

show what the phase

transition was like.

Gluon

Atom

Quark Antiquark

INFLATION

PRIMORDIAL SOUP

THE FIRST GALAXIES

Proton

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