Mad Max...sorry Matter-antimatter Madness

So, let’s fucking continue.
Now we’re talking about the time between 10^(-43) and 10^(-36) seconds.
First question: why the hell even bother with such microscopic fractions of a second?

Because physics was changing insanely fast back then, and every tiny stage matters.
I want to build you the whole puzzle piece by piece.

Today I’ll tell you about the reason why we even exist.
Because it’s not as simple as “the universe appeared and here you are.”
Nope. In those microscopic fractions of a second everything could’ve just self-destructed and that would’ve been the end of it. No people, no posts, no phones, no fucking letters.

After the Planck-level madness the universe cooled down a bit.
Just a little. From a temperature where the laws of physics themselves were melting to a temperature of only about 10^28 degrees.
Yeah. 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000 degree

if I didn’t fuck up the zeros.

At that moment space and time were already stable, but there was still no matter as we know it.
Everything around was a boiling field of pure energy.
Or maybe those esoteric weirdos were right all along, who knows. LOL

All three forces that today are different: strong, weak and electromagnetic were the same damn thing back then.
Physicists actually call this the Era of Grand Unification.
Don’t laugh, that’s literally the name.

There were no electrons, no quarks, no photons, only that single unified field.
And that field had its own carriers: so called X and Y bosons (well not only them, but let’s not complicate it).
These bosons were hypothetical bridges between matter and antimatter.
hypothetical, because we still haven’t proven they really existed.

They could turn quarks (which later became protons and neutrons) into leptons (which later became electrons and neutrinos) and back again.
In today’s world that’s impossible, the laws forbid something like an electron turning into a quark.
But back then it happened all the time.

Matter and antimatter were constantly flipping back and forth.
The only difference between them was that they were mirror images of each other.
They were literally dark twins.

The difference between this era and the Planck one is that here physics already exists but structure does not yet.
Spacetime stopped twitching like foam in a schizophrenic seizure and gravity had already separated as its own force.
But the particles still had no individuality, everything was still mixed together.

By the time 10^(-36) seconds hit everything started to go to shit and that’s the key moment.
If not for that “mistake”, we wouldn’t exist.

When the temperature dropped, symmetry broke.
That means the laws of physics themselves briefly failed.
Like one clumsy particle tripped over its own shoelaces....and that accident is the reason we exist.
Let’s thank the dude.

The X and Y bosons disappeared, too heavy to survive.
The temperature dropped a bit more and they just fucked off.
Froze up like cowards… that would totally be me if I were a boson. Born in Siberia, still afraid of the cold.

And this is where the difference between matter and antimatter appeared.
Because of tiny quantum irregularities, after those bosons decayed, there was just a little more matter left.
Less than one part in a billion.

And that microscopic imbalance eventually became everything we see today: galaxies, stars, humans, assholes.