Why didn’t the universe burst immediately after the Big Bang, as it should have according to some predictions? In the opinion of a team of physicists from Imperial College London and the universities of Copenhagen and Helsinki, gravity would have provided it with the necessary stability to survive its own expansion in that early period.
Research on the Higgs particle , discovered at CERN in 2012 and responsible for adding mass to all other particles , suggests that boson production during the very early accelerated expansion of the universe – so-called inflation – should have led to instability and collapse. That is why the aforementioned scientists try to find out why this did not happen and they believe that there is a simple explanation.
In a new study published in the journal Physical Review Letters, they describe how the curvature of space-time – gravity – gave the cosmos the stability it needed to survive . They have also investigated the interaction between Higgs particles and gravity, considering how it might vary with energy. Well, they have seen that even a small interaction between the two elements would have been enough to stabilize the universe and prevent its destruction.
“The Standard Model of particle physics, which scientists use to explain elementary particles and their interactions, had so far not given an answer as to why the universe did not collapse after the Big Bang. Our research looks at the last parameter unknown in that Model – the interaction between the Higgs boson and gravity . This parameter cannot be measured in experiments with particle accelerators, but it has a large effect on Higgs instability during inflation. Even a relatively small value is enough to explain the survival of the universe without any new physics ”, explains Professor Arttu Rajantie, from the Department of Physics at Imperial College London.
This team of experts intends to continue their research with cosmological observations aimed at studying this interaction in more detail and better explaining its effect on the development of the early universe. To do this, they will use data from current and future European Space Agency missions, referring to measurements of cosmic microwave background radiation and gravitational waves. “Our goal is to measure the interaction between gravity and the Higgs field using cosmological data.
If we are able to do this, we will have provided the last unknown number of the Standard Model of particle physics and will be closer to answering the fundamental questions about why and how we are all here, “concludes Rajantie.
