The Logbook of Schrödinger's Cat

As Terry Pratchett said, "In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded." This is exactly how many people see the Big Bang. However, there is a big difference between "nothing" in people's imaginations and "Nothing" that really exploded. And that’s what we are going to discuss now. What exploded and why? How did it happened that the explosion brought the entire Universe out of this Nothing? And how the heck it was packed into it? So, let's begin. We all know from school what atoms are. They are the little things that everything is made of. Once upon a time, a couple of ancient Greek philosophers, Leucippus and Democritus, noticed that linen laid out for drying actually dries. So, these ancient Greeks decided that the water consists of something very small and this small things gradually disappear. Of cause, this was noticed by everyone, especially the women, who actually laid out this linen for this exact purpose, but only those men decided to think about the nature of things while being engaged to such a boring activity. They called these little things atoms, which means indivisible. And they were wrong, but they did not know it and died happy that they penetrated the nature of things. So, they said, the world is made of tiny atoms and void.

Time has passed. Once upon a time, people discovered that the world is a little bit more complicated, and the indivisible atom turned out to be pretty much divisible. First, people discovered that the atom consists of two main things: a proton and an electron. The proton is positively charged particle, which is proudly located in the center of the atom, and the electron is negatively charged thing that flies around. And scientists decided that those are now the indivisible parts. A proton is such a big and heavy thing, and an electron has about 1000 times smaller mass. They were often depicted as one heavy ball in the center and another one in the circular orbit nearby. However, this was a picture of only the simplest hydrogen atom, which has only one proton and one electron, and the other atoms turned out to be even more complex; they have several protons in the center, and several electrons around, but still it was beautiful and clear picture, and the scientists calmed down: The world consists of protons, electrons and void.

However, this void turned out to be unexpectedly huge. If we consider the simplest hydrogen atom and imagine that it has become of a size of a... say giant wheel of the view, then the proton will be the size of a grape or a bead placed in the center, and the electron is orbiting the wheel. All the rest will be empty space. In case of other elements, like helium, oxygen, etc., we have several protons instead of one, which we can imagine as some beads glued together and located in the center of an atom. And the same amount of electrons would be circling around. All of them are located at different orbits, and these orbits are positioned further and further away from the core. And this distance is measured already in several wheel's radii or even in several dozen radii.

But the adventure of these little things is not over yet. First, scientists compiled a table of elements by the number of protons in the nucleus of atoms. It turned out that substances very much change their properties depending on this amount. The number of protons in the nucleus is equal to the number of orbiting electrons. But when people measures the mass of the nucleus they found out that the mass is too big for this arrangement. So, scientists decided that in addition to protons in the nucleus there is something else, some little thing that has mass but no charge. And it was it! People found a particle with the mass that is approximately equal to the proton mass, but neutral (with no charge). They called it a neutron for simplicity.

Along the way, it turned out that the proton is a very stable particle, one of the main elements of which the Universe is built of. Some of the protons that are inside our body or the body of our planet have existed right from the time of the Big Bang — billions of years. Do you feel it? Can you comprehend it? Oh, yeah! But what about neutrons? And it happen to be not very stable particle; it likes to fall apart. This process is called beta decay, when the neutron is divided into a proton and an electron. Well, plus something else, but we will leave it for now. Inside the nucleus of each element, they coexist very amicably — protons and neutrons — holding on tightly to each other and not wanting to split. And electrons (which also turned out to be very stable particles) fly around at a distance that we have already discussed.

And I must say that they fly on special orbits, which are not circular, they are spherical. Each electron has its personal orbit, and these orbits never intersect each other; they are located one inside the other as shells of the onion or as nesting dolls. And between them, there is a waste empty space. No electron can occupy the orbit, where another electron already dwells. Not allowed. This is Dr. Pauli's rule that is called the exclusion principle. It’s forbidden. And the electrons obey Dr. Pauli. For a while. But once upon a time… 

But wait! First, let's travel a little deeper into the particles. Those protons and neutrons, which at first seemed to be the very indivisible particles, also turned out to be very divisible. They consist of quarks, three quarks in each neutron and each proton. Quarks are very fancy and diverse particles, and scientists suffered a lot, coming up with different names and colors, and other characteristics for them. But we don’t need it for now. The important thing is that now protons and neutrons also consist of some kind of quarks and void. And quite possibly this is not the limit of their division.

Phew... Let's make a break. Now we know that an indivisible atom is completely divisible, and even divisible into many parts.

Now let's imagine this: somewhere in the Universe some particles and atoms fly by close to each other and therefore they are attracted to each other. Gathering gradually in one big pile, they attract other particles and atoms to themselves, and now there are more and more of them. The more they gather to this heap, the more they attract others, etc. Time passes and a celestial body appears, which consists mainly of hydrogen and a small amount of other elements. And in this celestial body, the most densely populated place is the center. It becomes very crowded, and everything else presses down on this core. Like in the ocean, pressure increases with depth, so in gas formations. The higher the altitude, the thinner the atmosphere — like on Earth. And vice versa, the deeper inside —the substance becomes more thicker and dense. 

Now imagine what happens in the depths of the Mariana Trench on Earth. The pressure there is so great that the submarine will be crushed like a shell. But an ordinary atom in this Mariana Trench feels quite good. However, imagine the depths of the ocean on the Sun or another star. Here, at the very depths, this atom feels uncomfortable. And what if the star mass is equal to several tens or hundreds of the mass of the Sun? The atoms inside in the depths are getting really bad. They barely hold that terrible weight, which puts pressure on them from above.

And once the atoms in the depths collapse!

At first (as supposed), the so-called inverse beta-decay occurs inside the star. As we recall, during beta decay, a neutron turns into a proton, electron, and something else. And during inverse beta decay, protons and electrons combine together to form a neutron. What happens during this process? If there is a distance similar to a wheel of view radius between an electron and a proton (on a comparative scale of an atom), then we can imagine how much void is squeezed out of the star (if you may say so)!

When a star that has a mass of, for example, tens of suns and millions of miles in its diameter, collapses into a neutron star, the mass of the new star remains almost the same except the mass of the stuff that flew away into the Universe during a collapse-explosion. However, the size of this new star will not be measured in millions or even thousands of miles. Its diameter will be say 12 miles.

But this is not the limit of compression. Because in some cases, the boundaries between the neutrons and protons also could fall down, and the star collapses to a quark star; and now it becomes even smaller in size, say 7 miles in diameter. 

Think this is the limit? Of course, not. After all, we know that there are also black holes — the so-called space objects, which could swallow the star with a mass from several tens to several millions of suns. Well, not exactly! It is not about a black hole with humongous appetite. This is not like a star is getting swallowed; the star is just getting self-packed into a black hole. The large star is converting and transforming into a black hole, which is the tiny cosmic object with huge mass and various miraculous features, which are not well studied yet.

And we can only imagine what microscopic elementary particle the atom is divided to, so that it can be packed so thoroughly that there will not be a millimeter of free space between these proto-particles. Not a micro-meter of emptiness. Not a nano-, pico-, femto-, atto-, zepto-, yocto-meter of emptiness. Nothing. We have reached the limit of fissility of an atom. We got the primary proto-sand and put everything in a proto-sandbox. The result was a cosmic body that has virtually no physical size. Wow! Is this thing could be called "nothing"? Is this really “nothing” if in mass it is equal to that same star with a mass of a million suns? What if several similar black holes merged together? And once upon a time, the entire Universe can be packed into such a cosmic object, which... Nevermind… Can you really imagine this mass? The mass of the whole Universe. How do you like this "Nothing"?

And if one day it explodes, there will be a new Big Bang, new stars and galaxies. And everything, the entire life of the entire Universe will start again…