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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."
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
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday October 26 2017, @07:58PM
At least in the observable universe, it is extremely unlikely, because otherwise we'd see some places with a lot of matter-antimatter-annihilation. Outside the observable part of the universe, we can only guess. The standard guess is that the universe looks everywhere the same.
Only recently we had a story here on SN that the missing baryonic matter has been found, and it was ordinary matter, not antimatter,
Baryonic antimatter is not a candidate for dark matter, not for dark energy, as its properties are not right.
Yes. Since "anti-light" is just light (a photon is its own antiparticle), they would look exactly like normal stars emitting light. Except that somewhere around it where its antimatter stellar wind hits the matter interstellar medium, hard gamma rays would be produced.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.