Where Is The Positive Charge In Our Universe

 

The Universe Is Filled With Negative Charged Electrons While All Of The Positive Charged Positrons Are Missing

One of the most asked questions by so many people is; how did our universe begin? This is an open question that many have thought about, talked about and theorized about. Currently the most accepted theory for the start of the universe we live in is the Big Bang Theory. This theory, in as few words as possible, says the universe as we know it and see it today started as a big ball of energy that started expanding. And actually is still expanding today. In the early stages of this expansion, the universe went through different phases. One of the later phases is where gravity started doing what it does best, pulling things together. As gravity pulled more and more matter together atoms started to form. Then, atoms started getting pulled together to form planets and then planets started bunching together to form galaxies giving us the universe we see today.

However, there are still many unanswered questions about the beginning of our universe, but one of the biggest questions is the Charge Asymmetry of our universe. Basically, our universe only has a negative charge in it, the electron. The universe does have some positive open charge in the form of positrons. But the amount of positrons and positive charge is far, far less than the negative charged electron. Soon after a positron does come into existence via a natural process it interacts with an electron which causes the electron and positron to turn in to a couple of gamma ray photons, which is basically high energy light. When thinking about the difference in the number of electrons compared to the number of positrons, electrons are part of every atom in the universe, and they roam freely about the universe in vast numbers. Other than a few natural processes that occur in the universe, positrons are not associated with anything.

Is it a bad thing that there are far more electrons than positrons? No, not for us. But for the beginning of the universe, it is a problem. One of the general principles of physics is Symmetry, which basically is for every up there is also a down. For a left there is a right and for a forward there is a rearward. There is a lot more associated with symmetry, but this directional analogy provides a general idea of what it is. As for electrical charge at the beginning of our universe, the symmetry is that for every negative charge there should be a positive charge. But there wasn’t, and this raises the question of why is there more negative charge than positive?

Before moving forward, it is necessary to take a moment to talk about the four forces of nature, which are gravity, the strong force, the weak force/interaction and the electromagnetic force.

Gravity, this is the gravity we are all familiar with. It is by far and away the weakest of all of the forces.

The Strong Force, this is the strongest of all of the forces, and it is the one that holds quarks together, more about quarks shortly. Quarks are the basic particles that make up the proton and the neutron. It takes three quarks to make up a proton, and three quarks to make up a neutron.

The Weak Force/Interaction, this is the second weakest of all of the forces. Basically, what it does is it flips or changes a quark so that a neutron can become a proton. Or a proton becomes a neutron. This force/interaction is involved in other processes but the interactions with protons and neutrons is its most important interaction.

The Electromagnetic Force, this is the electric and magnetic force(s) that we are familiar with and are part of our daily lives and activities.

Current theory is that at the time of the Big Bang, the four forces were merged into a single, super force. At about one-millionth of a second after the Big Bang the super force starts to break apart. First gravity breaks away from the super force leaving the strong force, the weak force and the electromagnetic force. Shortly after gravity breaks off the Strong Force breaks off, and shortly after this occurs the last two forces, the Weak Force and the Electromagnetic force break apart.

Moving on to about a second after the Big Bang, the theory says that electrons and positrons are moving around and destroying each other. In other words, the electromagnetic force is at work pulling the negatively charged electrons and the positively charged positrons together causing them to destructively interact with each other. But somehow or another there were more electrons than positrons and all the positrons got destroyed leaving only electrons. This gives our universe the Charge Asymmetry that we are talking about. How come symmetry was broken and there were far more electrons than positrons is an unanswered question.

Again, the current theory is that about 1 microsecond after the Big Bang all matter, which are the electrons, neutrinos and quarks are formed. But all matter also includes anti-matter, which are the positrons, anti-neutrinos and anti-quarks. However, when talking about the beginning of the universe, the main players are the matter particles because we live in a matter-based universe where very little anti-matter exists. The exception for looking at anti-matter particles is the positron. Its interaction with electrons is significant so it gets all the attention. As for the other anti-particles, the anti-neutrino, along with the normal matter neutrino do not have any charge so they are not associated with any charge asymmetry. Anti-quarks as well as normal matter quarks carry both a positive and a negative charge. However, the association of quarks with the big bang in general are pretty much ignored.

But what if there really isn’t a charge asymmetry? What if it were possible to account for the total charge in the universe by just looking a little deeper for the missing positive charge?

Quarks are a major part of our universe and there are 6 identified quarks, listed below. Like the electron they are classified as elementary particles. That is, they are not made up of any kind of smaller particle. From the chart below, you can see that there are 3 different levels, Generations, of quarks, and that each of the Matter Quarks has an Anti-Matter match. The first-generation quarks, the UP and the DOWN quarks, make up every proton and neutron in our universe. And protons and neutrons form the nucleus of every single atom of everything made throughout the entire universe. The second and third generation quarks are not significantly involved with any process in our universe.

 

	Matter	Quarks
CHARGE	1st Generation Particle	2nd Generation Particle	3rd Generation Particle
+2/3rds	UP	CHARM	TOP
-1/3rd	DOWN	STRANGE	BOTTOM
	Anti-Matter	Quarks
-2/3rds	Anti-UP	Anti-CHARM	Anti-TOP
+1/3rd	Anti-DOWN	Anti-STRANGE	Anti-BOTTOM

Quarks are not at all like electrons or any of the other particles that we are familiar with. They are a unique particle unto themselves. So, some additional information about quarks is necessary.

MASS, each of the 6 quarks has its own distinct mass. But the masses do increase by generation. The First-Generation Quarks are the lightest. The Second-Generation quarks weigh more than the First-Generation, and the Third-Generation Quarks are the heaviest.

CHARGE, the electron charge is the basic charge of our universe. As listed in the chart above, the charge of the Up-Quark is two-thirds of the magnitude of the electron charge, and it is positive. The Down-Quark charge is negative, like the electron, and one-third of the magnitude of the electron charge.

COLOR, when talking about quark basics, another property that must be covered is the color or flavor of a quark. All six of the quarks in the above chart also come in three colors, Red, Green and Blue. In other words, there is a Red Up-Quark, a Green Up-Quark and a Blue Up-Quark. Similarly, the other 5 quarks in the above chart also come in three colors just like the Up-Quark. Although quark color is a fascinating topic on its own, it does not come into play with respect to this discussion on electric charge asymmetry.

There are a few additional characteristics about quarks that need to be shared. They do not exist individually within our universe. They are seen at the very least as attached pairs. The most common of the quark attachments are a combination of 3 quarks. And the most common three-combination of quarks is the proton and the neutron. Other than the proton and the neutron, the different quark combinations have very, very short lifetimes, around a nanosecond and much less. The most common quarks seen in our universe are the Up and Down quarks along with some anti-up and anti-down quarks. The other 4 quarks and their anti-quarks and a large portion of the anti-up and anti-down quarks are rarely seen.

Regarding charge asymmetry within our universe, looking at the quark chart above note that the up-quark has a two-thirds positive charge. And, that the down-quark has a one-third negative charge. This is a fifty-percent positive charge asymmetry. That is, in the up-quark and down quark comparison there is twice as much positive charge then there is negative charge. When looking at the total charge for the universe we currently live in, the quark charge asymmetry will account for missing positive charge. In other words, when particles were formed in the early part of our universe, just after the big bang a large chunk of positive charge went toward the quarks instead of positrons.

It has been estimated that due to the stability of electric charge in our universe the number of positively charged protons matches the number of negatively charged electrons. However, there are two positively charged up-quarks in each proton. In other words, twice as many positively charged up-quarks were formed at the same time as the negatively charged electrons and positively charged positrons. This means that the missing positive charge that we see in our universe could be accounted for in the positive charge quarks.

An additional consideration, recall from the above discussion of the four forces of the universe that the strong force, which is only associated with quarks, broke free from the “super-force” before the electromagnetic force. And the strong force is the strongest of the four forces. This means that as all matter was being formed this force was available before the electromagnetic force to pull quarks together thus creating positive charge quark combination before any possible left over positive charge positron are destroyed by electrons.

Recall that at the beginning of this paper there was the discussion about symmetry and how there should be an equal amount of negative charge and positive charge. This symmetry principle also applies to the quarks. In other words, there should be an equal number of all 6 quarks and their anti-quarks in our universe. However, we clearly do not see this type of quark symmetry in our universe. The fact of the matter is that in our universe there is a significant quark asymmetry not only in the numbers of all the quarks, but also in quark charge. In other words, if we find the missing second and third generation quarks and the greater positive charge than negative charge associated with these missing quarks The charge asymmetry would most likely disappear.

At the beginning of the paper the question was asked “why was there more negative charge than positive charge?” Maybe the question should be “where did the positive charge of the missing quarks go?” The missing positive charge and the associated missing quarks are probably in some distinct part of the universe waiting for us to learn and understand more of the physics of our universe. And, maybe once the quark charge asymmetry and the missing quarks are found it will be discovered that there is no “charge asymmetry” in our universe.