Mysterious Antimatter Physics Discovered at the Large Hadron Collider (scientificamerican.com) 39
"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.
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.
Re:University fiscal year starts September 1st (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Informative)
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."
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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.
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"which is three times per year, and doesn't necessarily align with the Federal fiscal cycle."
And that is relevant to the LHC in europe how exactly?
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Undergrads are on summer vacation so grad students are freed up from marking assignments to write papers.
So (Score:1)
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Key Difference (Score:3)
This is just so cool (Score:1)
I don't have anything useful to add here,
just that this is so incredibly cool to witness during our lifetime!
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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.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Roestified? (Score:2)
I believe it is just as plausible that we will be spätzleified, kartoffelpuffer-mit-apfelmusified, or even racletted.
No love for cheese fondue?
(sad kitty eyes, while holding a caquelon in the hand)
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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.
I am hoping to be made into a Pierogi.
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Well, kinda, you already are, right? Meat wrapped in a doughy shell. shrug
The ancient prophecies have been fulfilled!
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Maybe... (Score:1)
... 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.
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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.
It's certainly possible that the initial conditions of the universe could have included some "starting matter" and that's the reason for the discrepancy. However, if that were the case then there would be no reason for us to observe CP violation at all. Given that we do see CP violation, albeit just not enough to explain the asymmetry we see in the universe, it seems more plausible that the asymmetry is due ot post-Big Bang physics and that we have just not seen all the CP violation out there. Indeed, it i
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Much of the history of humanity involved this sentiment. A small band of the most annoying philosophers came up with this weird idea that explanations that could be tested should be preferred and, in fact, should be tested. They would have been shoved forcibly away into obscurity but it turns out that idea is extremely effective at producing cool toys.
Re: Maybe... (Score:2)
Are you saying zero-sum is not a thing?
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Science is brutal, and doesn't follow the media cycle.
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It's not that it violates the theory but that it violates the symmetry. And yes, it's long been known that CP-symmetry violation occurs: that's why nowadays the main question in this area is whether CPT-symmetry holds.
Strong CP (Score:5, Interesting)
Doesn't this simply mean that CP is not a thing after all and that they should no longer be expecting matter and antimatter to obey it?
CP is definitely a "thing" since so far we have only seen one of the three interactions in the Standard Model break it: the weak interaction. The EM interaction obeys the symmetry perfectly and, strangely the strong interaction seems to as well but, in theory, it could easily break it too. This leads to what is known as the "strong CP problem" since if the strong force could break CP symmetry but does not there has to be some reason for that and we don't yet know what it is. Indeed, this has lead to a search for a new type of Dark Matter particles, axions, which arise in theories that explain why there is no CP violation in strong interactions.
Interesting. However... (Score:2)
Wow (Score:1)
Don't mess up (Score:1)
"an answer to why anything exists at all." (Score:2)
"It's all in your mind, ya know."