Fractions of a second after the Big Bang, the explosion that gave way to all known existence, the universe expanded billions of billions of times faster than it does today. However, scientists will now have to look for a different explanation than previously believed. The particle that would explain this extreme inflation of the universe, the inflaton, does not seem to exist. Or, at least, it has not been found as expected in observations made by physicists in Krakow and Zurich.
All modern cosmological models are based on Einsten’s Theory of Relativity . This suggests that the universe was a dynamic creation , and that at the beginning, 13.8 billion years ago , it must have been extremely hot and expanding at a much faster rate than it is today . One of the survivors of the moment of the birth of the universe is the microwave background radiation . Based on observations of this radiation, there must have been a very short but extremely rapid explosion of space-time. A change of force that expanded the universe and that is also responsible for exhibiting a remarkable uniformity in the particles observed today.
The inflaton seemed to be the ideal candidate to explain this expansion. In fact, it was ruled out that the culprit was the Higgs boson due to its high mass, and the inflaton would be a new particle, with Higgs properties, but with a much lower mass . However, observation made with detectors from a previous experiment at CERN has found no traces of this particle. To try to detect the inflaton, a model was proposed: to measure the frequency of oscillation between the inflaton and the Higgs boson , both “sister” particles. Since the inflaton would have a lower mass than the Higgs boson, a phenomenon of quantum physics would occur whereby some particles would be cyclically transformed into others. After traveling a few meters in the detector, the inflaton was expected to disintegrate into two other particles: muon and antimuon. But this disintegration has not occurred , which indicates that the particle does not exist.
However, this observation does not mean that the inflaton does not exist. “It may be that what happens is that the way in which this inflaton exists is not what was expected “, in the opinion of the doctor in Particle Physics from CERN and scientific popularizer, Javier Santaolalla . “I would not say that this particle is discarded, but that it has not been found in the way it was sought . For me it is not a resounding no.”
More observations of different particle variations will be needed to try to find the presence of this inflaton. But, if the observations of these variations do not turn out to correspond with what was expected, inflation, which explains so well the homogeneity observed in the universe , would become the greatest mystery of modern physics.
