Gian Francesco Giudice: The Big Bang understood as the event that created the hot, dense gas of cosmic matter was not an explosion starting from a po… - Gian Francesco Giudice

" "

Gian Francesco Giudice: The Big Bang understood as the event that created the hot, dense gas of cosmic matter was not an explosion starting from a point in space. If it had been, we could detect traces of that initial point today. Instead, astronomical observations teach us that the primordial matter gas was incredibly uniform and homogeneous. This indicates that the universe in its infancy was like a giant pot of well-mixed soup. The Big Bang is the event in which this soup was created, not at any special point, but homogeneously everywhere in the pot. It is a uniform transition that involved a very large, perhaps even infinite, region of space that was suddenly filled with matter. Understanding the Big Bang means understanding what caused this transition.
Journalist: And before the Big Bang, what was there?
Gian Francesco Giudice: Today it is thought that before the Big Bang there was only empty space. A very special empty space, however. There was no matter, but the fabric of space was imbued with a form of energy called precisely vacuum energy capable of exerting repulsive gravity. The effect is quite amazing because it is the exact opposite of the force of gravity we are used to, which can only attract material bodies.

English
Collect this quote

About Gian Francesco Giudice

Gian Francesco Giudice (born 1961) is an Italian theoretical physicist working at CERN in particle physics and cosmology.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Gian Giudice
Enhance Your Quote Experience

Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.

Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.

Additional quotes by Gian Francesco Giudice

Il Big Bang inteso come l'evento che ha creato il gas caldo e denso di materia cosmica non è stato un'esplosione a partire da un punto dello spazio. Se lo fosse stato, oggi potremmo individuare le tracce di quel punto iniziale. Invece, le osservazioni astronomiche ci insegnano che il gas di materia primordiale era incredibilmente uniforme e omogeneo. Questo indica che l'universo nella sua infanzia era come un gigantesco pentolone di minestra ben mescolata. Il Big Bang è l'evento in cui si è creata questa minestra, non in un punto speciale, ma in modo omogeneo ovunque nel pentolone. È una transizione uniforme che ha coinvolto una regione di spazio molto vasta, forse anche infinita, che si è improvvisamente riempita di materia. Capire il Big Bang significa capire cosa ha causato questa transizione». E prima del Big Bang cosa c'era? Oggi si pensa che prima del Big Bang ci fosse solo spazio vuoto. Uno spazio vuoto, tuttavia, molto speciale. Non c'era materia, ma il tessuto dello spazio era intriso di una forma di energia detta appunto energia del vuoto capace di esercitare una gravità repulsiva. L'effetto è del tutto stupefacente perché è l'esatto contrario della forza di gravità a cui siamo abituati, che può solo attrarre i corpi materiali.

The discovery of the Higgs boson was a fantastic achievement, but not enough to answer all the questions in particle physics. It was a bit like walking into a three-star restaurant and being served soup. We theoretical physicists confidently await a more tantalizing second course.

Limited Time Offer

Premium members can get their quote collection automatically imported into their Quotewise collections.

Armed with the most advanced mathematics and a good dose of imagination, a generation of theoretical physicists conceived the idea that the universe must have undergone a transformation, after a tenth of a billionth of a second from the Big Bang. At that instant, the entire structure of space-time crystallized into a new form, following a phase transition, just as water turns into ice below zero degrees. [...] The same physicists also realized that this idea so suggestive as to sound like science fiction implied the existence of a new particle, a granule of the substance that permeates all of space-time. Data presented yesterday at Cern show that that particle-the Higgs boson - really exists, corroborating the fantastic story of the cosmic phase transition.

Loading...