Somewhat interestingly, most of the energy in the present Universe was not created right at the instant of the Big Bang. Rather, per the standard cosmological model, the large majority of the energy that went into the generation of the matter and its kinetic energy in the present-day Universe was created during the approximately 10^-35 seconds after the Big Bang during the period known as cosmic inflation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_inflation . Energy conservation is, quite importantly, rather different in general relativity than it is in Newtonian mechanics or special relativity -- it's _not_ just a fixed number of joules of energy in the entire Universe that has been there from the instant of the Big Bang until now. Instead, energy (or more specifically the integral over space of the T^{00} element of the stress-energy tensor) obeys equation (3) in https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/energy_gr.html . Thus, most of the energy in the present-day Universe (which is unfortunately almost certainly inaccessible for practical usage) is in the form of dark energy, energy which was not there right at the instant of the Big Bang; and even the very large majority of the potentially accessible energy in the present-day Universe, i.e. that within matter, its kinetic and gravitational potential energies, and in electromagnetic fields, was generated not at the Big Bang but rather ultimately out of the inflaton field that was itself generated during the brief period of cosmic inflation, rather than having been generated ab initio at the Big Bang.
Sorry for this boring technical physics comment. Excellent column!!! :)
Excellent, thank you
Thank you, Khaholi!
I'm sad this series is ending. Thank you, Katherine!
Thank you for reading, Ken!
This is the most incredible series on writing I’ve ever read. Thank you so much Katherine.
Wow, thank you, Ellen! I appreciate that so much.
Excellent column, like your others!!!
Somewhat interestingly, most of the energy in the present Universe was not created right at the instant of the Big Bang. Rather, per the standard cosmological model, the large majority of the energy that went into the generation of the matter and its kinetic energy in the present-day Universe was created during the approximately 10^-35 seconds after the Big Bang during the period known as cosmic inflation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_inflation . Energy conservation is, quite importantly, rather different in general relativity than it is in Newtonian mechanics or special relativity -- it's _not_ just a fixed number of joules of energy in the entire Universe that has been there from the instant of the Big Bang until now. Instead, energy (or more specifically the integral over space of the T^{00} element of the stress-energy tensor) obeys equation (3) in https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/energy_gr.html . Thus, most of the energy in the present-day Universe (which is unfortunately almost certainly inaccessible for practical usage) is in the form of dark energy, energy which was not there right at the instant of the Big Bang; and even the very large majority of the potentially accessible energy in the present-day Universe, i.e. that within matter, its kinetic and gravitational potential energies, and in electromagnetic fields, was generated not at the Big Bang but rather ultimately out of the inflaton field that was itself generated during the brief period of cosmic inflation, rather than having been generated ab initio at the Big Bang.
Sorry for this boring technical physics comment. Excellent column!!! :)
Thank you for this info, Justin, and for your insightful comments on my other columns as well!