Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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

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


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 26 2017, @03:37PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 26 2017, @03:37PM (#587843)

    What... the... fuck?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 26 2017, @05:49PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 26 2017, @05:49PM (#587901)

    It appears to be a joke banking on the modern socio-political divide to push through with the comparison of "equal but not equal" as seen with matter / antimatter. It is a nerdy political troll joke, I believe we call that the troll trifecta.

    Oh wait, they forgot gender. Keep working on that hat trick!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27 2017, @02:12AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27 2017, @02:12AM (#588097)

      Damn, Poe's law gets more difficult every day.