LHCb Experiment Observes New Matter-Antimatter Difference 129
An anonymous reader writes "Matter and antimatter are thought to have existed in equal amounts at the beginning of the Universe, but today the Universe appears to be composed essentially of matter. By studying subtle differences in the behavior of particles and antiparticles, experiments at the LHC are seeking to cast light on this dominance of matter over antimatter. Now the LHCb experiment has observed a preference for matter over antimatter known as CP-violation in the decay of neutral B0s particles. The results are based on the analysis of data collected by the experiment in 2011."
Re:What if light travels REAL SLOW (Score:5, Insightful)
What if monkeys can actually talk but refuse to do so because they don't want us to know?
What if quarks are actually microscopic doughnuts, and we can fly through them into an alternate universe where Snooki is president?
What if... ah, screw it, if you can't see where I'm going with this by now there's no hope for you.
Re:equal amounts at the beginning of the Universe (Score:5, Insightful)
You say "QED" like science is a closed method of understanding like logic is. The scientific method makes acknowledgement that its results are only accurate in as far as the controls we've been able impose in our experimentation and observation hold. We have never tested the laws of thermodynamics in conjunction with a singularity, and thus anything we say about their behavior there is an extrapolation. Extrapolation isn't induction, and what you just said isn't a proof.
Re:How do we know (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, let me start by saying I don't know anything about this field. However, it seems to me that the interstellar medium is that kind of combination of really close to a vacuum and really big that still allows for quite a lot of particles out there hitting the edge of our solar system (I believe we're close to (or already are) getting actual measurements from probes we've sent out that have already left or will soon leave the solar system). Where these collisions occur, we'd expect matter-antimatter pairs to self-annihilate, and we could observe that. Since we don't, then the interstellar medium is made of matter. Likewise, if there were some antimatter stars out there, there would be a boundary between antimatter and matter in the interstellar medium and we could see the self-annihilations through observation. Maybe there are whole antimatter galaxies out there, but then again, we have discovered instances of galaxies that are colliding or have collided. Similar to stars passing through the interstellar medium, it seems we would be able to observe the matter-antimatter annihilation in at least some if they were in equal proportion.
Re: equal amounts at the beginning of the Universe (Score:5, Insightful)
This is incorrect. All currently known laws become meaningless as all your variables go towards infinity. This doesn't mean there are no laws - simply that we lack the theory to describe them in such extreme conditions.
It's the "what's infinity * infinity? Infinity!" - it doesn't really describe anything real. Of course, this situation changes dramatically if we could show that the variables didn't go to infinity, but were bounded in some fashion. Presently, we can't though.