Scientists have discovered a different indication in the attempt to resolve one of the big puzzles of modern physics: why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.
The discovery was based on observations with the largest machine in the world, the great Hadron Collider, who helps researchers to investigate the fundamental nature of matter.
Everything we see around us consists of subatomical matter particles such as protons and neutrons, which belong to a category particles called Baryons.
An experiment with the help of the gigantic particle accelerator, based in Cern in Switzerland, has seen Baryons for the first time Form more matter than antimatter.
The findings can change our understanding of how small particles work on each other and help explain the absence of antimatter, said Tom Hadavizadeh, a physicist at the Monash University and employee of the project.
“We have not yet found new physics, but it has given us a new way to look for it,” said Dr. Hadavizadeh.
The researchers have published their findings in Nature.
The mystery of the missing antimatter
The current leading theory in particle physics – the standard model – predicts that for each particle of matter that forms, a corresponding particle of antimatter forms.
Antimatter particles are identical to matter particles, but reversed with their electrical charges.
Scientists have observed similar amounts of matter and antimatter that are generated when they create subatomical particles by colliding larger particles at high speed around large underground loops in the large Hadron Collider.
But anti -material does not linger – if it clashes with regular matter, both particles destroy each other, releasing energy.
If antimatter and matter were really created in equal quantities, according to the standard model, the universe would not exist.
The problem for this theory is that the universe exists, and it is usually made of matter, with only small amounts of antimatter.
This “matter antimatter asymmetry” is an important unsolved problem in physics.
“The way we explain that is that at a certain point in the early universe, matter should have been somewhat preferred over antimatter,” Dr. Hadavizadeh.
“There is a small excess that still remains as soon as most of the antimatter and matter throw away, and that little excess is what we still see today.”
So where did this asymmetry between matter and antimatter came from?
Key particle seen more matter
Ray Volksas, a physicist at the University of Melbourne who was not involved in the research, said that the standard model has a way to explain part of the asymmetry antimetry.
“It has been experimentally known since the beginning of the 1960s that there is actually a subtle difference in the way matter and antimatter interact [with other particles]”Said Professor Volkas.
This subtle difference is called the violation of the cargo parity or CP violation and can help explain why there is less antimatter than matter.
Although researchers had observed this asymmetry in some smaller particles, they had not yet observed it in Baryons – made a kind of subatomar particle of three quarks.
“Almost all the issues we encounter are Baryons,” said Dr. Hadavizadeh.
The team of more than 1500 scientists from 20 countries, the collaboration called ‘Large Hadron Collider Beauty’ (LHCB), used the gigantic particle accelerator to look for examples of asymmetry in Baryons.
They analyzed libraries of data from the first few years of the experiment and looked specifically at strangely mentioned “beauty” Baryons.
They could see Baryons rot in an asymmetrical way – generate more matter than antimatter.
Professor Volkas says that it is an “interesting result”, but neither he nor the LHCB researchers think that they have come close to solving the entire Matter antimatter mystery.
“The amount of CP violation in the standard model is actually not enough to explain asymmetry of cosmological matter antimeters,” said Professor Volkas.
“It is one of the great mysteries of science.”
Are we going to break physics?
Matter antimatter asymmetry is just one problem with the standard model.
Although it has all tests that particle physicists have put for it in recent decades, the theory has huge gaps.
It also cannot explain gravity or dark energy, a mysterious phenomenon that is thought to be behind the acceleration of the expansion of the universe.
“We don’t want our theories to be completely wrong – they can’t even be because they work too well – but we want them to be incomplete so that we can add things,” said Professor Volkas.
The study used by the large Hadron Collider collected between 2009 and 2018. ((Delivered: CERN))
He says that the LHCB experiment, and similar similar, are becoming increasingly thorough in investigating the Matter-Antimatter mystery.
“What they are trying to do is this CP -violation -effect with an increasing precision examinations to try to find out whether the standard theory is still being verified, or whether it will fail and we have to expand or change the theory.”
Although this new result is consistent with the standard model, the researchers suggest that it can indicate places where they can go beyond the theory.
Now that the researchers have measured the asymmetry in Baryons, they can investigate this phenomenon further.
The study may be able to unlock a completely new set of particles “to observe new types of physics, said Dr. Hadavizadeh.
#Atom #Smasher #sees #indication #explain #universe #exists