DISCOVERIES
HOW ONE PARTICLE COULD SOON REWRITE OUR LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE
COMMENT
The particle that gives all matter mass may have played a key role in the birth of the Universe
ILLUSTRATION: MATT HOLLAND
When we look across vast distances using our most advanced telescopes, we look back in time. Einstein taught us that light has a finite speed; therefore, it takes light longer to travel to us the further one looks.
Thanks to this, cosmologists have been able to see light dating back to about 14 billion years ago. This light reveals something spectacular and mysterious – the Universe was once filled with a sea of energy, waves of tangled electrons and photons in the form of a hot fluid, known as a plasma. We call this plasma the cosmic microwave background (CMB).
We cosmologists have precise theoretical and observational evidence that this plasma underwent gravitational collapse with the aid of an invisible form of matter, called dark matter, forming the first stars and, eventually, the organised superstructure that inhabits the current Universe. However, a mystery still lurked: the properties of this sea of energy seem to originate from what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance” – objects communicating with each other at instantaneous speeds across ridiculously large distances. This is known as the horizon problem.