The interactive reference to the beginning and evolution of the universe, focusing on the earliest epochs from the Big Bang to the formation of the first stars and galaxies.
Dark matter halos provided the gravitational scaffolding for the first black holes. Their mass, spin, and merger history determined whether primordial gas collapsed directly into massive seeds or formed smaller stellar remnants that later grew.
The universe is made almost entirely of matter, yet the Big Bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter. This article explores the baryon asymmetry problem, the cosmic epochs from the Planck era to structure formation, and the ongoing search for answers.
Electron-positron annihilation was a pivotal event in the first second after the Big Bang, transferring entropy to photons and neutrinos, setting the stage for nucleosynthesis and the cosmic microwave background. This article explores its role in the cosmic timeline, from the lepton epoch to recombination.
The quark–gluon plasma is the hottest, densest state of matter ever created, existing just after the Big Bang. This article explores its role in the universe’s evolution, from the Planck epoch to the formation of stars and galaxies, and how experiments like those at CERN recreate it.
Explore the electroweak epoch, the Higgs mechanism, and the full cosmic timeline from the Planck epoch to structure formation. This definitive guide explains how the universe evolved, how particles gained mass, and what evidence supports our current model.
Baryogenesis is the hypothetical process that generated the observed imbalance between matter and antimatter in the early universe. This article explains the Sakharov conditions, the leading scenarios, and how this asymmetry shaped the cosmic timeline from the Planck epoch to the formation of galaxies.
Baryogenesis is the hypothesized process that created the observed excess of matter over antimatter in the early universe. This article explains the problem, Sakharov’s conditions, candidate mechanisms, and the cosmic timeline from the Planck epoch to structure formation.
Symmetry breaking in the early universe describes how the unified forces of nature separated as the cosmos cooled, shaping the particles and structure we observe today. This article explores the key epochs from the Planck era to structure formation, the role of inflation, and the cosmic microwave background as a relic of that transformative time.
Pair-instability supernovae are colossal explosions predicted to have occurred among the first-generation stars, known as Population III. These events may have enriched the early universe with heavy elements, influenced reionization, and left a unique observational signature that telescopes like JWST are now seeking.
The scalar spectral index (n_s) quantifies how primordial density fluctuations vary with scale. A value of 1 indicates perfect scale invariance, while observations from Planck and earlier missions show n_s ≈ 0.96, a key confirmation of inflationary cosmology and a crucial input to the ΛCDM model.
