> “According to our understanding of the Standard Model [of particle physics], the Big Bang should have created exactly the same amount of matter and antimatter, but [for the most part] only matter remains,” says BASE Spokesperson Stefan Ulmer. This is strange because when matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate one another. Scientists want to know how matter came to dominate our universe.
We don't have any evidence that matter DOES dominate the universe. Distant galaxies could easily be composed of antimatter. Since the Big Bang should have created equal amounts of both, you would expect that in the vast majority of cases they would annihilate one another, leading to a universe overwhelmingly dominated by (wait for it) empty space.
We have tons of evidence that matter dominates our neck of the woods. Regions where one form is dominant over the other may be in the minority, but you would have to enter such a region to find stars, planets, and galaxies. The fact that we're here means that this must be an area where one type is everywhere and the other is almost completely absent. But as best we can tell, the fact that we're all made of matter rather than antimatter is the result of a very old coin flip. The probability that all of the galaxies we can see landed on the matter side of the coin is infinitesimal.
I'm pretty sure they have very compelling reasons to believe that distant galaxies are NOT made of anti-matter.
Here is one I found in a quick search:
The boundary between any group of anti-matter galaxies and the region of space where matter is dominant should emit gamma rays, as the intergalactic wind pushes dust particles made of regular matter into one of the anti-matter galaxies. We don't see such gamma ray emissions in our observations of the cosmos.
Thanks for doing my research for me. This is why you should always google before you post :)
I could edit my original comment to be more accurate and make a more limited point, but it's probably best to let it stand as-is, for anyone else who may have similar thoughts.
That just creates the same questions for why this region of space is so dominated by 'matter' while adding a new one that another vast region of space is dominated by 'anti-matter'.
If you can come up with some compelling mechanism for it then sure it may be possible, but currently that seems to be more complex and fails to provide any support of any kind.
It's pure speculation, but I am suggesting that instead of some sort of annihilation imbalance, the mechanism might be a sorting process that causes antimatter and matter to collect into horizon-shaped pockets.
If there were such a sorting process that was inherently linked to cosmological horizons, it could explain both where the antimatter went, and why we don't see an annihilation zone where the boundaries meet.
The problem is your sorting process is identical to your original statement. It's like saying "why is the sky blue" > "air is blue". You need to make predictions that are different from your observations.
On the other hand if you say something like "Air becomes blue when it's colder." Then you can actually test what's going on and falsify the statement which may lead to progress.
Suppose you suggest the output of this experiment will change over time. Now, waiting a billion years is not going to happen but adding even more digits of accuracy may be possible.
Are you a physicist with 20 year of career? Otherwise, I'll steer away from having strong opinions and just listen to what they are saying.
The reason: They probably know better than you and not just making an "assumption".
For example, I used to think that they were "speculating" about the big bang happening and the formation of the universe. Until I learned about the Cosmic Microwave background. These guys know better than making wild guesses.
tl;dr
"The results confirm that the [proton and antiproton] behave exactly the same, as the laws of physics would predict. So the mystery of the imbalance between matter and antimatter remains."
alternate TL;DR: Science was done, no new data was generated that couldn't have been predicted from existing laws, existing mysteries remain.
Basically this is the "boring" science, not the exciting "hmm, that's odd" science. It's very important science of course, the sort that you need for science to actually work, but it is rather boring from the perspective of someone outside looking in on the process.
Something I'm rather curious about. Are you disinterested in it, because of its nature? Similarly, are you excited by the day in day out 'hot' studies? And by 'hot', I mean things like 'researchers discover amazing new way to destroy cancer cells' given what you know to expect of such a study.
It seems to me that so often we apply, in completely good faith, base characteristics to others when considering them as a group, yet simultaneously it seems like few would ever say those characteristics actually apply to themselves.
Mostly just a random thought that occurred when reading your post. It's interesting to consider things like all movies becoming explosions and CG because 'everybody else loves that stuff' even though ticket sales have declined by 30% since 2002 (gross receipts are up thanks to substantial increases in price). Or similarly at the same time everybody focuses on 'hot' science, trust and arguably (and paradoxically) even interest seems to be rapidly declining.
Well, mostly disinterested in that it's really just a more precise measurement. The "breakthrough" in this case is a ridiculously precise measurement, which is very impressive, and is a huge step forward for particle physics as a science because it opens the door to measure even more stuff, but in this particular case it hasn't contributed anything "new" in terms of data.
There's a famous quote out there that goes something like 'the most exciting words in science aren't "Eureka", they're "that's odd"', and I feel that's highly applicable in this case. There's no "that's odd" event here, everything is exactly as expected, it all worked perfectly and produced exactly the result that was expected. That's great for affirming that all our theories are correct, and as I said this is a breakthrough in the quality of measurements we can achieve, but it's not a new mystery to explore, or an unexpected result that we can use to refine or develop new theories. Basically everything we didn't know before this experiment we still don't know, and we don't have any new data points except for having eliminated an area of uncertainty that new interesting data might have been hiding in.
I would argue that it is odd. We assume there must be something separating matter and anti-matter, but the list of possibilities is getting really short.
Sort of like a murder misery where everyone at a party has a reliable alibi. Suggesting something even odder must be going on.
It's actually quite exciting science, because it means the nature of the difference between matter and antimatter could be something really unknown that is yet to be discovered. They're running out of candidates to test...
Super impressed with their antimatter containment solution though, I had no idea anybody could even get close to that kind of containment duration.
Too bad there's still no way to measure how anti-matter couples to gravitons. I know it sounds a little specious, but if anti-matter also had anti-matter it might help explain the asymmetry.
We don't have any evidence that matter DOES dominate the universe. Distant galaxies could easily be composed of antimatter. Since the Big Bang should have created equal amounts of both, you would expect that in the vast majority of cases they would annihilate one another, leading to a universe overwhelmingly dominated by (wait for it) empty space.
We have tons of evidence that matter dominates our neck of the woods. Regions where one form is dominant over the other may be in the minority, but you would have to enter such a region to find stars, planets, and galaxies. The fact that we're here means that this must be an area where one type is everywhere and the other is almost completely absent. But as best we can tell, the fact that we're all made of matter rather than antimatter is the result of a very old coin flip. The probability that all of the galaxies we can see landed on the matter side of the coin is infinitesimal.