Mysterious Antimatter Physics Discovered at the Large Hadron Collider

"Scientists at the world's largest particle collider have observed a new class of antimatter particles breaking down at a different rate than their matter counterparts," reports Scientific American: [P]hysicists have been on the hunt for any sign of difference between matter and antimatter, known in the field as a violation of "charge conjugation-parity symmetry," or CP violation, that could explain why some matter escaped destruction in the early universe. [Wednesday] physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)'s LHCb experiment published a paper in the journal Nature announcing that they've measured CP violation for the first time in baryons — the class of particles that includes the protons and neutrons inside atoms.

Baryons are all built from triplets of even smaller particles called quarks. Previous experiments dating back to 1964 had seen CP violation in meson particles, which unlike baryons are made of a quark-antiquark pair. In the new experiment, scientists observed that baryons made of an up quark, a down quark and one of their more exotic cousins called a beauty quark decay more often than baryons made of the antimatter versions of those same three quarks... The matter-antimatter difference scientists observed in this case is relatively small, and it fits within predictions of the Standard Model of particle physics — the reigning theory of the subatomic realm. This puny amount of CP violation, however, cannot account for the profound asymmetry between matter and antimatter we see throughout space...

"We are trying to find little discrepancies between what we observe and what is predicted by the Standard Model," [says LHCb spokesperson/study co-author Vincenzo Vagnoni of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics]. "If we find a discrepancy, then we can pinpoint what is wrong." The researchers hope to discover more cracks in the Standard Model as the experiment keeps running. Eventually LHCb should collect about 30 times more data than was used for this analysis, which will allow physicists to search for CP violation in particle decays that are even rarer than the one observed here.

So stay tuned for an answer to why anything exists at all.

Is it that time of the year?

[will4]

It seems that lots of science research and discoveries are made in July to September.

Is there any calendar alignment with the US federal budget year which beings October 1st?

University fiscal year starts September 1st

[will4]

Is this a year-end clean-out to get all the discoveries on the books before year end?

Re:University fiscal year starts September 1st

[Anonymous Coward]

You understand that Switzerland is not in America, right?

Also, The Italian Institute of National Physics are not too concerned about congress reviewing their expenditure, let alone your apparent belief that science needs to produce consumer grade products for you to sell or it doesn't count as real business.

Re:Is it that time of the year?

[pz]

The peer-review process is so unpredictable and irregular that it effectively decouples the time-of-year for the discovery from the time-of-year for the publication of said discovery.

So, the answer to your question is, "no," on that grounds.

But, also, if there *were* any push for results, it would be aligned with the end-of-budgetary-year for a given grant, which is three times per year, and doesn't necessarily align with the Federal fiscal cycle.

So, again, the answer is, "no."

Re:

[pjt33]

What you say is true, but there's also a sense in which the announcement of results does have a bias to the northern hemisphere summer, although for reasons unrelated to one country's budget. In short: it's conference season.

So

[reiterate]

There was a CP violation at the Hadron Collider, noted.

This is just so cool

[SPC]

I don't have anything useful to add here,
just that this is so incredibly cool to witness during our lifetime!

Re: This is just so cool

[zawarski]

Yeah, till they create a black hole and we are all spaghettified.

Re:

[codeButcher]

Yeah, till they create a black hole and we are all spaghettified.

While another comment mentions The Italian Institute of National Physics (I don't know why them specifically), I believe it is just as plausible that we will be spätzleified, kartoffelpuffer-mit-apfelmusified, or even racletted.

Maybe...

[Viol8]

... more matter was formed than antimatter at the big bang for reasons that only existed at the moment (or maybe before) of creation and therefor will forever be unknown. Makes as much sense as anything else.

Re:

[martin-boundary]

It means nothing until it has been re-reviewed and re-repeated, and people have had 5 years to mull it over and think of alternative explanations.

Science is brutal, and doesn't follow the media cycle.