from the so-THIS-is-what-you-get-when-you-squeeze-the-charmin dept.
According to an article posted on a major news aggregator in 2015, Matter and Antimatter Are Mirror Images
As it turns out, maybe, but not so much inside
Physicists in the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University have confirmed that matter and antimatter decay differently for elementary particles containing charmed quarks.
Distinguished Professor Sheldon Stone says the findings are a first, although matter-antimatter asymmetry has been observed before
[...]Using LHC data, they identified both versions of the particle, well into the tens of millions, and counted the number of times each particle decayed into new byproducts.
"The ratio of the two possible outcomes should have been identical for both sets of particles, but we found that the ratios differed by about a tenth of a percent," Stone says. "This proves that charmed matter and antimatter particles are not totally interchangeable."
Adds Polyakov, "Particles might look the same on the outside, but they behave differently on the inside. That is the puzzle of antimatter."
Matter and antimatter behaving differently is not a new concept and has been observed before in particles with strange quarks and with beauty quarks:
What makes this study unique, Stone concludes, is that it is the first time anyone has witnessed particles with charmed quarks being asymmetrical: "It's one for the history books."
A step closer, but still no where close to explaining the disparity between matter and antimatter.
Bearded Spock is laughing at us.
According to Wikipedia: CP violation:
In particle physics, CP violation is a violation of CP-symmetry (or charge conjugation parity symmetry): the combination of C-symmetry (charge conjugation symmetry) and P-symmetry (parity symmetry). CP-symmetry states that the laws of physics should be the same if a particle is interchanged with its antiparticle (C symmetry) while its spatial coordinates are inverted ("mirror" or P symmetry).
Related Stories
In the most stringent test yet of differences between protons and antiprotons, scientists investigated the ratio of electric charge to mass in about 6,500 pairs of these particles over a 35-day period. To keep antimatter and matter from coming into contact, the researchers trapped protons and antiprotons in magnetic fields. Then they measured how these particles moved in a cyclical manner in those fields, a characteristic known as their cyclotron frequency, which is proportional to both the charge-to-mass ratio of those particles and the strength of the magnetic field.
(Technically, the researchers did not use simple protons in the experiments, but negative hydrogen ions, which each consist of a proton surrounded by two electrons. This was done to simplify the experiments — antiprotons and negative hydrogen ions are both negatively charged, and so respond the same way to magnetic fields. The scientists could easily account for the effects these electrons had during the experiments.
The scientists found the charge-to-mass ratio of protons and antiprotons "is identical to within just 69 parts per trillion," Ulmer said in a statement. This measurement is four times better than previous measurements of this ratio.
In addition, the researchers also discovered that the charge-to-mass ratios they measured do not vary by more than 720 parts per trillion per day, as Earth rotates on its axis and travels around the sun. This suggests that protons and antiprotons behave the same way over time as they zip through space at the same velocity, meaning they do not violate what is known as charge-parity-time, or CPT symmetry.
[...]
Using more stable magnetic fields and other approaches, the scientists plan to achieve measurements that are at least 10 times more precise than what they found so far, Ulmer said.
If matter and anti-matter are mirrors of each other, and were created in equal measure by the Big Bang, then where did all the anti-matter go?
See our related story: Time-Symmetric Formulation of Quantum Theory Provides New Understanding of Causality.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Friday March 22 2019, @09:03AM (6 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 22 2019, @10:18AM (5 children)
By definition, matter and antimatter are related through C, that is, AM = C(M).
If matter and antimatter are mirror images, that means AM = P(M).
So using the definition above, matter and antimatter are mirror images if and only if C(M) = P(M). Or equivalently, M = CP(M). Which is exactly CP invariance.
Or in other words, the link title is not only not misleading, it describes exactly what it wants to describe.
P-symmetry, on the other hand, would imply M=P(M). That is, it would mean that matter is its own mirror image. Which has been known not to be for quite some time, as the weak interaction maximally violates P-symmetry.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Bot on Friday March 22 2019, @11:11AM (4 children)
I googled all those terms and now a police van is outside my house.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Friday March 22 2019, @12:48PM
(Score: 2, Touché) by nitehawk214 on Friday March 22 2019, @02:27PM (2 children)
Let me guess, you searched for CP.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday March 22 2019, @03:57PM
So he's arrested for CP-violation?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday March 22 2019, @08:44PM
I know, shouldn't have searched for "how to poison all the middle east and make it look like an accident" too.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 22 2019, @10:08AM (1 child)
I think you mean: "[…] but still nowhere close to […]"
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Sunday March 24 2019, @03:53PM
Hey, you should catch me on two-for-one apostrophe and comma day. That can make for some creative posting.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 22 2019, @12:11PM (1 child)
So they found a small deviation from a background model riddled with "corrections" and ad hoc assumptions. I won't be surprised to see some other explanation for this besides CP symmetry violation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 22 2019, @12:15PM
Source: http://cds.cern.ch/record/2668357/files/ [cds.cern.ch]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 22 2019, @12:29PM
not pretending to understand any of this.
i was hoping that because of einsteins insight that no point/local of space-time is special at all
(comparisons are relative to observer) and that it would be possible to move an object from point A to point B
without violating any conservation laws.
example: point A "somewhere with no gravity well". point B somewhere far away, also with no gravity well. it thus should be possible
to "borrow" energy to move object from point A to B and when arriving "paying back" borrowed energy. since there's no difference -or rather-
nothing special about point A to point B from the total universe perspective, no energy was gained or lost, and only the local changed.
assuming the object was at rest (relative) at point A and is at rest again at point B.
however with this C?P? violation it seems that there is a way to "cringle" time-space to make one location (space-time) special; that is the local
where the c?p? violation happened.
maybe this can be used as a beacon of some sort, like "marking" a location in space-time with a c?p? violation event; like a flare
by which one can navigate absolute and free from relativity?
so either we get to move from point A to point B for free (without losing energy and without having to lose reactionary mass) -or- we get a
mechanism to absolutely mark a point in space-time ^_^
(Score: 4, Informative) by Taibhsear on Friday March 22 2019, @04:29PM (1 child)
For anyone else that was also confused as to what a beauty quark was, apparently "Truth" and "Beauty" are just other names some people use for Top and Bottom quarks, respectively. Up, Down, Top, Bottom, Strange, and Charm were the six I had learned about before.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 23 2019, @01:56AM
Truth and Beauty are their True Names.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday March 26 2019, @01:23AM
There's another symmetry: time symmetry. And what seems to be sacrosant is TCP symmetry, in the sense that no one has a clue how to formulate a quantum mechanical formalism that violates it.
So if CP symmetry fails, so must time-symmetry. Isn't that interesting?