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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: where did matter come from?
« on: 01/11/2013 20:00:46 »It has been speculated that the Big Bang occurred because of quantum fluctuations. Because quantum fluctuations are fundamental changes in state, they can be associated with what we understand as releases of energy. Energy is the capacity to initiate change. Because matter was produced following the Big Bang, and it is associated with the change in state, matter is a product of that change. Therefore, matter was produced from this change in state initiated thru a release of energy which may or may not have occurred because of a quantum fluctuation.
"From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
File:Vacuum fluctuations revealed through spontaneous parametric down-conversion.ogv
The video of an experiment showing vacuum fluctuations (in the red ring) amplified by spontaneous parametric down-conversion.
In quantum physics, a quantum vacuum fluctuation (or quantum fluctuation or vacuum fluctuation) is the temporary change in the amount of energy in a point in space,[1] arising from Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
According to one formulation of the principle, energy and time can be related by the relation[2]
\Delta E \Delta t \approx {h \over 2 \pi} (<---see the actual on the original web page)
That means that conservation of energy can appear to be violated, but only for small times. This allows the creation of particle-antiparticle pairs of virtual particles. The effects of these particles are measurable, for example, in the effective charge of the electron, different from its "naked" charge.
In the modern view, energy is always conserved, but the eigenstates of the Hamiltonian (energy observable) are not the same as (i.e., the Hamiltonian doesn't commute with) the particle number operators.
Quantum fluctuations may have been very important in the origin of the structure of the universe: according to the model of inflation the ones that existed when inflation began were amplified and formed the seed of all current observed structure."
Again, back to....what caused/gave birth to the Quantum Fluctuations...energy?!