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Mystery Deepens: Matter and Antimatter Are Mirror Images

posted by janrinok on Friday August 14 2015, @02:53AM   

Phoenix666 writes:

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?

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See our related story: Time-Symmetric Formulation of Quantum Theory Provides New Understanding of Causality.

Original Submission

• Re:Where's the beef? Re:Where's the beef? (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @05:56AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @05:56AM (#222706)

  If there was an immense magnetic field like what you propose in the early universe then surely we should have been able to see evidence of it from anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. There doesn't seem to be anything that might show such a thing. If it did exist, what do you propose created it and maintained it long enough to cause the antimatter to be repelled? The universe was very small, hot, and dense back then in the period of baryogenesis, and it would need to be a very strong field indeed to be able to overcome the natural electrostatic attraction between positively-charged protons and negatively-charged anti-protons, and keep them apart long enough that most of them don't annihilate each other. No, antimatter must behave in some fundamental way different from normal matter, such that baryogenesis created the surplus of matter that makes up everything we see. There is some evidence that the weak nuclear force can violate CP symmetry, meaning that antimatter is affected in subtly different ways by it, but it doesn't seem to be enough to account for all the matter we see.

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• Re:Where's the beef? Re:Where's the beef? (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @05:29PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @05:29PM (#222912)

  Positive and negative charges move in opposite directions in a magnetic field. And what is being described is the largest magnetic field ever possible. Also you describe the early universe as small then ask how there could be enough strength to separate all the charged particles when at that point (the magnetic moment) would be occurring instantaneously when the explosion in the first moments occurred(at the speed of light to be exact). The positive and negatively charged particles then parted like the jets that spring from black holes and the universes were pushed immense distances apart, much further than the span of their diameters. This would create 2 differently charged universes propelled in opposing directions from a central point with momentum (or the effect of expanding space) preventing them from re-colliding from their respective electrostatic attractions.

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  • Re:Where's the beef? (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @05:30AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @05:30AM (#223156)

    What effect do you think the monster magnetic field would have on leptons which of course have as much electric charge as the baryons? Electrons are going to wind up lumped with antiprotons and protons with positrons. How do you make atoms or anti-atoms then without the appropriate leptons? It still does not fit with what we see. Your scenario would have two universes with overwhelming positive and negative charges, not the universe we see today which has practically zero net charge.

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