Hydrogen to Helium fusion in the VERY early universe.

[Alan Grayson]

I'm watching a science channel about the BB. It's claimed that in the VERY early universe, a few seconds after the BB, it was so HOT that Hydrogen was fusing into Helium. BUT ... I thought Hydrogen didn't form until around 380,000 years AFTER the BB, when the CMBR formed. What's going on? TIA, AG

[Brent Meeker]

It's talking about protons (hydogen nuclei) and neutrons fusing into alpha particles (helium nuclei).  The CMBR was emitted much later when it was cool enough for nuclei to capture electrons and become hydrogen and helium atoms.

Brent

On 11/11/2019 6:36 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

I'm watching a science channel about the BB. It's claimed that in the VERY early universe, a few seconds after the BB, it was so HOT that Hydrogen was fusing into Helium. BUT ... I thought Hydrogen didn't form until around 380,000 years AFTER the BB, when the CMBR formed. What's going on? TIA, AG

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[Lawrence Crowell]

On Monday, November 11, 2019 at 8:36:35 PM UTC-6, Alan Grayson wrote:

I'm watching a science channel about the BB. It's claimed that in the VERY early universe, a few seconds after the BB, it was so HOT that Hydrogen was fusing into Helium. BUT ... I thought Hydrogen didn't form until around 380,000 years AFTER the BB, when the CMBR formed. What's going on? TIA, AG

You are thinking of hydrogen atoms. After the first three minutes, when EW was unified, there was a 20 minute period where temperatures permitted p + p --> D + e^ + neutrino. These could fuse into He_2^4. A quarter of all protons fused into alpha nuclei. This was predicted and supports BB. The temperature of universe was billions to hundreds of millions K. Interesting that mush fusion happened that quickly. It was later when temperatures dropped below 10,000K or so that hydrogen and helium atoms formed.

LC

[Alan Grayson]

Yes, the documentary referred to "hydrogen", not protons. Does the BB theory explain the existence of protons during the first few seconds or minutes using the quantum foam? AG

[Lawrence Crowell]

Protons emerged from a quark-gluon plasma state after about 3 seconds. This is also around when the EW symmetry broke.

LC 

[Alan Grayson]

The thrust of my question was about the quantum foam. I note that Bruce emphatically denies the existence of the quantum foam. But the emergence of particles from the vacuum seems to depend on the existence of the quantum foam. So, in your opinion, does the emergence of particles from the vacuum depend on the existence of the quantum foam? TIA, AG 

[Lawrence Crowell]

Quantum foam is Planck scale or near Planck scale physics. There are a number of definitions of quantum foam. Really all it means is that if you try to isolate a quantum bit or qubit in a very small region, the Planck length ℓ_p = √Għ/c^3, you find it in a black hole. At this point the energy of the probe is equal to the mass of a quantum black hole. If you are not trying to isolate information or matter into such as extremely small scale spacetime is continuous and smooth all the way to almost infinitesimally small length.

LC 

[Alan Grayson]

Then particles hypothetically emerging from dimensions smaller than Planck scale CANNOT emerge, insofar as they're inside a BH. Doesn't this imply, if true, that the very early universe could never have been smaller than Planck scale? AG

[Lawrence Crowell]

The Planck scale is a sort of mirror scale, where anything on a trans-Planckian scale is not measurable for it is inside quantum black hole or the smallest region a qubit can be isolated in. A more sophisticated way of looking at this is with asymptotic safe quantum gravity.  

LC