Here is my take on the natural order of universe. Lets jump in.
The story actually starts with two friends called Energy and Entropy and an event called big-bang that they both attended together (or at-least came out together!) a long time ago before the universe was created. They had some great personalities, while one was indestructible the other was irreducible in that order. Initially after the big bang they had a field day. Energy kept spreading "out" creating space-time (in which we live) and entropy kept on increasing rapidly to give a sense of direction to this space-time (time moves forward). Now we know space-time itself is a kind of energy-form with entropy guiding it forward. But the happy story probably continued only for the first few nano or milli seconds after the event. They started fighting with each other soon after and lets see how.
Though we don't really know in what form energy was before the big bang, just after the big bang it kept on attaining new forms which had various characteristics. Primarily it was radiation, as evidenced by the background radiation of the universe considered as the tell-tale sign of a big explosion (though recently theories have been put forth suggesting a certain kind of concentric patterns in the radiation suggesting not one but multiple big-bangs!! go here for more excitement).
Ok, now lets get back to our story. Initially it seemed like it was the natural tendency of energy to spread out rapidly with no bounds, the form which entropy liked. But for some bizarre reason, from within radiation came a kind of "condensed minimum energy system" called "matter". And it really did matter (no pun intended). Yes, yes E=Mc2. Energy kept on condensing in to a zillion kinds of particles like quarks/strings, electrons, neutron, neutrinos etc, and no entropy did not really like it. It said to energy with a cunning intent "so you are going to fight with me, huh - but guess what I will always win, no matter how much you condense and decrease randomness I'm going to go to other places and compensate by increasing randomness". And so with those words came in to existence the 3rd law of thermodynamics. But really it was not the fault of energy for it was already in the form of radiation which brought the electric and magnetic forces in to the picture.
The story actually starts with two friends called Energy and Entropy and an event called big-bang that they both attended together (or at-least came out together!) a long time ago before the universe was created. They had some great personalities, while one was indestructible the other was irreducible in that order. Initially after the big bang they had a field day. Energy kept spreading "out" creating space-time (in which we live) and entropy kept on increasing rapidly to give a sense of direction to this space-time (time moves forward). Now we know space-time itself is a kind of energy-form with entropy guiding it forward. But the happy story probably continued only for the first few nano or milli seconds after the event. They started fighting with each other soon after and lets see how.
Though we don't really know in what form energy was before the big bang, just after the big bang it kept on attaining new forms which had various characteristics. Primarily it was radiation, as evidenced by the background radiation of the universe considered as the tell-tale sign of a big explosion (though recently theories have been put forth suggesting a certain kind of concentric patterns in the radiation suggesting not one but multiple big-bangs!! go here for more excitement).
Ok, now lets get back to our story. Initially it seemed like it was the natural tendency of energy to spread out rapidly with no bounds, the form which entropy liked. But for some bizarre reason, from within radiation came a kind of "condensed minimum energy system" called "matter". And it really did matter (no pun intended). Yes, yes E=Mc2. Energy kept on condensing in to a zillion kinds of particles like quarks/strings, electrons, neutron, neutrinos etc, and no entropy did not really like it. It said to energy with a cunning intent "so you are going to fight with me, huh - but guess what I will always win, no matter how much you condense and decrease randomness I'm going to go to other places and compensate by increasing randomness". And so with those words came in to existence the 3rd law of thermodynamics. But really it was not the fault of energy for it was already in the form of radiation which brought the electric and magnetic forces in to the picture.
Now enter electro-magnetism(EM) the all pervading medium range force. For energy in radiation form, electric and magnetic forces are its dad and mom (Yeah..I know it rhymed!). For it is their interlinked nature that creates radiation. Yes, yes lenz's law. One common feature of these forces is that they could attract and also repel. So as said before this radiation somehow turned in to intermediate matter-energy particles fancily called either strings or quarks depending on how much you like Mr. Hawking. In these particles EM left its signature characteristic of either attracting or repelling other particles. Now no two like particles can stay together (they repel) and no two opposite particles (that attract each other) can stay together either for they will annihilate to release energy.
So now a lot of different combinations of properties of EM created a whole range of negatively charged, positively charged and also neutral particles. There is another mysterious characteristic of these particles that I want to tell about but I will come to that later. After trying and trying to interact with each other these particles with the help of another set of friendly forces called the nuclear strong force and weak interaction force finally started forming large stable structures like electrons, protons, neutrons etc. (It was revealed later that these strong and weak forces were nothing but a different type of EM forces to the disbelief of many onlookers!. And to add to that they had this special property of acting only at very very small distances and while the hard force could only attract and the weak force could only repel any kind of particles to keep them from annihilating..how ingenious!!). So now EM has mastered both the medium ranges and short ranges. And by the way EM was called medium range force because over long ranges positive and negative forces tended to even out as they form stable clusters of matter. From now its a much familiar story of how these new particles went on to form atoms, molecules, clusters of matter, planets, stars, galaxies and but wait..... what!!?? We know that EM is medium range but how did it form such large structures at such large distances? Are we missing any part of its quest for dominance of long ranges??
Hmm! Here comes the mysterious characteristic that I was alluding to before. My theory (for the purpose of keeping EM the lead man) is that EM "knowing" its limitation of not being able to dominate across large distances did something fundamentally to alter the particles it created. Here is where the soty gets a bit or a lot crazy (if it was not already). It created a separate form of force which could only attract, knowing its earlier limitation of "even-ing out" if allowed to both attract and repel. This new child in time has come to be know as the legen..wait for it..dary Gravity. But to be sure that gravity does not dominate the entire ranges , EM made gravity very weak in medium and short ranges compared to itself. Though we owe much of our existence to EM because as humans we are merely a large cluster of particles held together single handedly by EM forces, yet with out gravity there would have been no stable environments for life to emerge. More on this later.
So now a lot of different combinations of properties of EM created a whole range of negatively charged, positively charged and also neutral particles. There is another mysterious characteristic of these particles that I want to tell about but I will come to that later. After trying and trying to interact with each other these particles with the help of another set of friendly forces called the nuclear strong force and weak interaction force finally started forming large stable structures like electrons, protons, neutrons etc. (It was revealed later that these strong and weak forces were nothing but a different type of EM forces to the disbelief of many onlookers!. And to add to that they had this special property of acting only at very very small distances and while the hard force could only attract and the weak force could only repel any kind of particles to keep them from annihilating..how ingenious!!). So now EM has mastered both the medium ranges and short ranges. And by the way EM was called medium range force because over long ranges positive and negative forces tended to even out as they form stable clusters of matter. From now its a much familiar story of how these new particles went on to form atoms, molecules, clusters of matter, planets, stars, galaxies and but wait..... what!!?? We know that EM is medium range but how did it form such large structures at such large distances? Are we missing any part of its quest for dominance of long ranges??
Hmm! Here comes the mysterious characteristic that I was alluding to before. My theory (for the purpose of keeping EM the lead man) is that EM "knowing" its limitation of not being able to dominate across large distances did something fundamentally to alter the particles it created. Here is where the soty gets a bit or a lot crazy (if it was not already). It created a separate form of force which could only attract, knowing its earlier limitation of "even-ing out" if allowed to both attract and repel. This new child in time has come to be know as the legen..wait for it..dary Gravity. But to be sure that gravity does not dominate the entire ranges , EM made gravity very weak in medium and short ranges compared to itself. Though we owe much of our existence to EM because as humans we are merely a large cluster of particles held together single handedly by EM forces, yet with out gravity there would have been no stable environments for life to emerge. More on this later.
If you thought that this story took million and billions of years to play out...then... yes yes you are right that you are wrong. This story happened with in the "first second" (again no pun intended) of the big-bang.
Lets stop here for part 1 and continue the story of gravity and life as we know it in part 2.
But before you go I want to point out that there are some important questions unanswered in this story of our eternal warrior called energy.
1. What exactly was energy doing before big-bang?? Probably condensed in to a dense point like singularity? What ever!
2. How did energy "expand" through "nothingness" and creating space-time? Chicken-egg paradox??
3. If there are boundaries to this energy then is it possible to go out of this space-time reality?
4. Why did energy like to form stable minimum energy systems or condensed systems called matter??
5. For all its greatness and being the ancestor of all energy forms, what exactly is radiation? Fluctuation of EM forces in space-time? What? And how did it go through nothingness to create space-time?Or does it need space-time to propagate?
6. Why was there a big noise about particle and wave natures of radiation itself?? Where did the particle nature come in from?
No one knows! Yet. See you in part 2
