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We now think that matter is made up of little strings. Burt Ovrut, University of Pennsylvania
Everything is more or less organized matter. To think so is against religion, but I think so just the same. Napoleon Bonaparte
Radioactivity is shown to be accompanied by chemical changes in which new types of matter are being continually produced ... The conclusion is drawn that these chemical changes must be sub-atomic in character. Ernest Rutherford, Philosophical Magazine September 1902
The Electric universe on the other hand deals with the electric structure of matter at the atomic level and works its way up. PSTV.tv – Thunderbolts of the Gods, Wallace Thornhill
The supply of matter in the universe was never more tightly packed than it is now, or more widely spread out. For nothing is ever added to it or subtracted from it. It follows that the movement of atoms today is no different from what it was in bygone ages and always will be. So the things that have regularly come into being will continue to come into being in the same manner; they will be and grow and flourish so far as each is allowed by the laws of nature. Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of Things
About fifteen billion years ago there were no stars in the sky; there wasn’t even any sky. All that existed was the primordial fire-ball. That fireball of energy condensed into the building blocks of matter at the birth of our universe. Horizon: The Hunting of the Quark, BBC 1974
Many experiments are being performed to discover the nature of matter ... One being the observation of proton decay ... As predicted by Grand Unified Theories. Horizon: What Einstein Never Knew, BBC 1985
The Big Bang: the most violent explosion there has ever been brought everything into existence. This early universe was hot – so hot it contained only raging energy. After just one second some energy was transformed into the seeds of matter, and the universe filled with a dense fog. 400,000 years passed as the universe grew, and eventually the fog settled to form atoms. Horizon: Is Everything We Know About the Universe Wrong? BBC 2010
What goes on beneath these fields in the Tevitron are some of the most violent collisions in the universe. Deep underground in a four-mile vacuum pipe, encased by super-conducting magnets, they smash together two sub-atomic particles at close to the speed of light. Horizon: What is Reality? BBC 2011
Working out which of these are elementary is a problem that has defined particle physics for over sixty years ... When experimenters first broke into them [atoms] they discovered ever smaller bits inside. ibid.
The particle zoo – a whole new level of reality had been discovered. ibid.
With the discovery of the Top Quark, physicists are close to understanding one of the greatest mysteries of reality: what it’s all made of. ibid.
The most important particle of all – the Higgs Boson ... The Higgs is now Fermilab’s Number One priority. But they aren’t the only ones looking for it. They have competition. From the biggest particle accelerator of them all – the Large Hardron Collider in Geneva. It is more than three times as powerful. ibid.
In our picture, there was a universe before the Big Bang, very much like our universe today: a low density of matter and some stuff called dark energy. If you postulate a universe like this, but the dark energy within is actually unstable, then the decay of this dark energy drives the two branes together. These two branes clash and then, having filled with radiation, separate and expand to form galaxies and stars.
Then the dark energy takes over again. It’s the energy of attraction between the two branes: It pulls them back together. You have bang followed by bang followed by bang. You have no beginning of time. It’s always been there. Neil Turok
Where did all the matter and radiation in the universe come from in the first place? Recent intriguing theoretical research by physicists such as Steven Weinberg of Harvard and Ya B Zel’dovich in Moscow suggest that the universe began as a perfect vacuum and that all the particles of the material world were created from the expansion of space ...
Think about the universe immediately after the Big Bang. Space is violently expanding with explosive vigor. Yet, as we have seen, all space is seething with virtual pairs of particles and antiparticles. Normally, a particle and anti-particle have no trouble getting back together in a time interval ... short enough so that the conservation of mass is satisfied under the uncertainty principle. During the Big Bang, however, space was expanding so fast that particles were rapidly pulled away from their corresponding antiparticles. Deprived of the opportunity to recombine, these virtual particles had to become real particles in the real world. Where did the energy come from to achieve this materialization?
Recall that the Big Bang was like the center of a black hole. A vast supply of gravitational energy was therefore associated with the intense gravity of this cosmic singularity. This resource provided ample energy to completely fill the universe with all conceivable kinds of particles and antiparticles. Thus, immediately after the Planck time, the universe was flooded with particles and antiparticles created by the violent expansion of space. William J Kaufmann, Universe pp529-532
Matter goes inside the surface of the black hole, shrinks down to the very centre where it gets destroyed in a region of infinite space and time. And it’s gone. Kip Thorne, California Institute of Technology
Matter itself evolves. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 10/13: World Within World, BBC 1973
Will matter then be destroyed or not?
22) The Saviour said, All nature, all formations, all creatures exist in and with one another, and they will be resolved again into their own roots.
23) For the nature of matter is resolved into the roots of its own nature alone. The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene ch4
For every one billion particles of antimatter there were one billion and one particles of matter. And when the mutual annihilation was complete, one billionth remained – and that’s our present universe. Albert Einstein
What is this mysterious antimatter? And where did all of it go? The Universe s2e11: Unexplained Mysteries, History 2008
Every time matter comes into contact with antimatter the outcome is the same: they annihilate each other. ibid.
One possibility is that perhaps there was a slightly higher percentage of matter than antimatter in the early universe. ibid.
The only thing that keeps people from walking through walls or falling through the floor is magnetism. Molecules and atoms are extremely small, and the space between atoms is extremely large. At an atomic level almost everything is made up of empty space. It’s not the atoms themselves but the magnetic field that makes matter solid, that keeps a person from walking through walls. The Universe s5e3: Magnetic Storms, History 2010
If you take matter and antimatter and combine it, it is explosive. And in fact is one of the greatest sources of energy in the universe. Professor Michio Kaku, author Physics of the Impossible
Antimatter is the mirror image of ordinary matter. However, matter has one charge and antimatter has an opposite charge. Michio Kaku
Our most advanced theories cannot explain why there was this asymmetry between matter and antimatter. But thank God it exists. Michio Kaku
With perfect mathematical elegance Dirac’s equation describes an atomic particle travelling at any speed ... As well as matter Dirac’s equation predicts the existence of anti-matter. Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Atom: The Illusion of Reality, BBC 2010
The vacuum seethes with huge numbers of matter and anti-matter particles continually being created and annihilated. ibid.
As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear-headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. Max Planck
Where there is matter, there is geometry. Johannes Kepler
Each one of us is made from mere matter. Yet we are matter with curiosity ... Why are we here? Brian Cox, Human Universe II: Why Are We Here? BBC 2014