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CERN: The Universe Shouldn't Exist

posted by martyb on Thursday October 26 2017, @01:46PM   
from the and-hummingbirds-should-not-fly dept.

takyon writes:

The apparent symmetry between matter and antimatter is puzzling scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN):

One of the great mysteries of modern physics is why antimatter did not destroy the universe at the beginning of time.

To explain it, physicists suppose there must be some difference between matter and antimatter – apart from electric charge. Whatever that difference is, it's not in their magnetism, it seems.

Physicists at CERN in Switzerland have made the most precise measurement ever of the magnetic moment of an anti-proton – a number that measures how a particle reacts to magnetic force – and found it to be exactly the same as that of the proton but with opposite sign. The work is described in Nature [open, DOI: 10.1038/nature24048] [DX].

"All of our observations find a complete symmetry between matter and antimatter, which is why the universe should not actually exist," says Christian Smorra, a physicist at CERN's Baryon–Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment (BASE) collaboration. "An asymmetry must exist here somewhere but we simply do not understand where the difference is."

CP violation.

Previously: Evidence Mounts that Neutrinos are the Key to the Universe's Existence
Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry Confirmed in Baryons
LHCb Observes an Exceptionally Large Group of Particles
Possible Explanation for the Dominance of Matter Over Antimatter in the Universe

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Original Submission

• Re:stupid questions from a layman (Score: 4, Interesting) by Taibhsear on Thursday October 26 2017, @02:44PM

  by Taibhsear (1464) on Thursday October 26 2017, @02:44PM (#587831)

  Can we do chemistry with anti-matter? If I have some positrons, anti-protons, and anti-neutrons, can I make anti-oxygen? (For that matter, can I make oxygen with current tech if I just have a bunch of random electrons, protons, and neutrons?) What about an anti-water molecule? Will it have the same properties as water? I'm guessing a mol of the stuff is way too much to expect to be able to make, but what about measuring the 104.5° bond angle?

  So far, it looks to be so. They've done so with anti-hydrogen. Research shows it behaves just as hydrogen does. So theoretically all other atoms should be as such. I don't believe they've made molecules of antimatter yet though.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihydrogen [wikipedia.org]
  There's even weirder stuff like excitons that are an electron orbiting an electron hole which has a relative positive charge so the electron orbits it and as a whole acts as if it were a hydrogen atom.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exciton [wikipedia.org]

  Parent

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