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Cosmology

Rare isotopic insight into the Universe

Nature volume 529, pages 33–34 (2016)Cite this article

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Light isotopes of hydrogen and helium formed minutes after the Big Bang. The study of one of these primordial isotopes, helium-3, has now been proposed as a useful strategy for constraining the physics of the standard cosmological model.

The accepted theory of cosmology, known as the standard cosmological model, invokes the existence of a hot early Universe about 13.7 billion years ago. At that time, matter (elementary particles) and radiation (photons) coexisted as an essentially amorphous plasma from which nuclei, atoms, stars and galaxies progressively formed. The observation of 'relics' from that period, and their comparison with theoretical predictions, allowed the standard model to be established, and helps scientists to probe the physics of the Universe and to determine the values of its fundamental properties. Writing in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Cooke1 suggests that observations of the abundance of one such relic, the rare helium isotope 3He, might provide information about the number of low-mass particle species in the Universe, thus constraining the standard model of nuclear and particle physics.

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Figure 1: Constraining the parameters of the standard cosmological model.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nikos Prantzos is at the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, 75014 Paris, France, and the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris.,

    Nikos Prantzos

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  1. Nikos Prantzos
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Correspondence to Nikos Prantzos.

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Prantzos, N. Rare isotopic insight into the Universe. Nature 529, 33–34 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature16326

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