- 3542 - - ANTIMATTER - Why Does Matter Outnumber Anti-matter? The Big Bang Theory contains some really wild assumptions. To start with the theory maintains that we all started from “nothing”. For this assumption to be true there must have been equal amounts of matter and anti-matter created. Even energy and anti-energy must have started in the beginning. So, if you add up the whole Universe again you get zero, “Nothing”. Now that is a big assumption.
------ 3542 - ANTIMATTER - Why Does Matter Outnumber Anti-matter?
- We have a lot of evidence that the Universe is made of matter. It is everything, nearly everything. In the laboratory and in hospitals we have evidence that anti-matter can be created. We have evidence that when matter and anti-matter come back together they create a burst of Gamma Rays. Radiation. Mass back to Energy. But, there is no anti-energy that we are away off being created at the same time.
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- Anti-matter was first discovered mathematically. It was needed to balance physicists equation of atomic behavior. We finally created some evidence in the laboratory in 1935 when we discovered the anti-electron.
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- Anti-electrons ( also called positrons) are exactly the same as electrons except the charge is reversed, it is positive rather than negative. Again, the Big Bang assumption is that creation had to have equal amounts of positive and negative charges in order to come from nothing.
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- All the particles since discovered appear to have an equal and opposite twin. Protons have anti-protons. Quarks have anti-quarks. Even the element hydrogen as a twin anti-hydrogen that is produced in the laboratory. Except for the opposite charges we can not tell the twins apart.
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- A galaxy made of entirely anti-matter would look to us to be exactly the same as a galaxy made entirely of matter. Unless, somehow you get the two together. If you landed one of our spaceships on the anti-planet in this galaxy you would go pwooooof! A burst of Gamma Rays is the evidence you get that that galaxy was made entirely of anti-matter.
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- Weird as it is anti-matter is being used in our daily lives. Anti-electrons, or positrons, are the “P” that is in PET Scans. Positron Emission Tomography, PET, they did not want to call it “anti-matter” for fear it would scare people. Would you lower your body into an anti-matter machine. I don’t think so.
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- The biggest mystery in physics is why do we live in a matter world and what happened to all that anti-matter that surely was created in the beginning? We know that the center of our Milky Way Galaxy is still producing anti-matter. We know because when an electron and an anti-electron come together they produce a unique signal of Gamma Ray energy. The signal is exactly as calculated using E = mc^2.
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- An electron and an anti-electron have the same mass. 1.822*10^-24 kilograms is the combined mass of the two of them. c^2 = 9*10^16 meters^2 / second^2 . m*c^2 = 1,020,000 electron volts. The two Gamma Ray bursts jetting away from the electron / anti-electron annihilation in the opposite directions is exactly 510,00 electron volts. An that is what we measure when we point our detectors at the center of our Galaxy.
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- Why is the Universe not just a sea of radiation? That is what physics says it should be. The Universe sprung from energy. Matter and Anti-matter were created in equal amounts. They should have disintegrated back into pure energy by now. What happened to leave us more matter than anti-matter in the Universe?
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- Electrons and anti-electrons pop into existence as matter particles when enough energy gets concentrated into a small enough space. This is happening at the center of our galaxy continuously. When the electrons and “positrons” come in contact with each other they annihilate each other in a burst of radiation, Gamma Rays. The Gamma Rays are a particular frequency and that is how we know this is happening at the center of our galaxy.
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- Calculations by physicists are that today’s matter represents 1 part in 1 billion parts of matter-anti-matter that somehow did not get annihilated. Somehow? There should be an equal amount of anti-matter that did not get annihilated. Where is it?
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- In 1928 Paul Dirac, a British physicists, developed a mathematical equation using Quantum Mechanics that describe an electron’s behavior. His equation required an anti-particle having a mirror image with the same mass but opposite in every other respect.
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- In 1932 Carl Anderson of Cal. Tech. discovered the anti-electron, or positron as it was called, in a cloud chamber.
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- In 1955 anti-protons were discovered in Berkeley’s particle accelerator.
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- In 1915 Emmy Noether, a German mathematician, proved the symmetry in nature required a law of conservation, and vice versa. A Conservation of Mass, a Conservation of energy, a Conservation of Momentum, a Conservation of Charge, all are derived from her laws of Symmetry.
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- When a particle decays such as a Muon decays into an electron emitted to the right, then, an Anti-Muon emits an electron to the left. This is perfect symmetry. However, symmetry is not always perfect. In 1964 physicists discovered that once in a while symmetry gets broken and an anti-Muon emits an electron to the right. Broken symmetry is called “Charge Parity Violation“.
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- So far, the Broken Symmetry discovered is to new to explain the creation of matter over anti-matter, but, physics are still looking for more Broken Symmetry. In 1999 they found 13% asymmetry in decay of B-mesons compared to anti-B-mesons. Progress continues to be steadfast to explain the asymmetry. More is needed.
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- 1956, the weak force interactions in Beta Decay displays broken parity symmetry.
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- 1957 Cobalt 60 nuclei emits more electrons in one direction that another.
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- 1964 K-mesons violate charge parity symmetry.
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- 1965 an anti-deuteron is created
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- 1980 W-Z Bosons discovered using a proton and anti-proton collider.
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- 1995 Anti-hydrogen atoms are created. Hydrogen is an Up-Quark, Up-Quark, Down-Quark and an electron. Anti-Hydrogen is an Anti-Up-Quark, Anti-Up-Quark, Anti-Down Quark and an anti-electron.
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- 1997 Astronomers discover anti-matter in the core of the Milky Way.
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- 2002 CERN particle accelerator produces anti-hydrogen atoms, millions of them.
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- 2009 LHC, CERN’s Large Hydron Collider of protons and anti-protons continues the search for an explanation of why matter outnumbers anti-matter.
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- 2022 May we live in interesting times.
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- 2022 - Scientists announced tantalizing findings that point toward one possible solution, but the data fall short of a definitive discovery. The theories about how matter got the upper hand over antimatter fall into two main camps. One, called “electroweak baryogenesis“. This proposes an extra versions of the Higgs boson, that particle related to how everything else gets mass.
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- If these Higgs cousins exist, they could have helped set off an abrupt phase transition, akin to the shift when water goes from liquid to gas, early in the universe that might have led to slightly more matter than antimatter in space.
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- When matter and antimatter come into contact, they annihilate each other, so most of the stuff in the young universe would have been destroyed, leaving behind just a small surplus of matter to make the galaxies and stars and planets around us.
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- The other theory, called “leptogenesis“, stems instead from neutrinos. These particles are much, much lighter than quarks and pass through the cosmos ethereally, rarely stopping to interact with anything at all.
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- According to this theory, in addition to the regular neutrinos we know of, there are extremely heavy neutrinos that are so heavy that they could have been forged only from the tremendous energies and temperatures present just after the big bang, when the universe was very hot and dense.
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- When these particles inevitably broke down into smaller, more stable species, the thinking goes, they might have produced slightly more matter than antimatter by-products.
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- Scientists at the T2K (Tokai to Kamioka) experiment in Japan, offers hopeful signs for the leptogenesis concept. The experiment observes neutrinos as they travel through 300 kilometers underground and change between three types, or flavors that is a peculiar ability of neutrinos called oscillation.
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- The T2K detected more oscillations in neutrinos than in antineutrinos, suggesting the two do not just act as mirror images of each other but, in fact, behave differently. Such a difference between a particle and its antimatter counterpart is termed “CP violation“, and it is a strong clue in the quest to understand how matter outran antimatter after the universe was born.
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- A requirement of the theory is that neutrinos and antineutrinos turn out to be the same thing. How is that seeming contradiction possible? Matter and antimatter are thought to be identical except for a reversed electrical charge. Neutrinos, having no charge, could be both at the same time.
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- If this possibility is the case, it could also explain why neutrinos are so light, perhaps less than one six-millionth of the mass of the electron. If neutrinos and antineutrinos are the same, they might gain mass not by interacting with the Higgs field, as most particles do, but through another process called the “seesaw mechanism“.
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- Their small masses would be inversely proportional to those of the heavy neutrinos that arose in the early universe. When one is up, the other is down, like a seesaw.
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- Evidence that neutrinos are their own antimatter counterparts could come from experiments searching for a theorized reaction called “neutrinoless double beta decay“, which could only occur if neutrinos were able to annihilate themselves as matter and antimatter do on contact.
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- The other theoretical option, “electroweak baryogenesis“, might be easier to investigate. Whereas the creation of heavy neutrinos involved in leptogenesis would most likely be beyond the capabilities of particle accelerators, the extra Higgs bosons predicted by this theory just might show up at the Large Hadron Collider.
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- “Electroweak baryogenesis” requires additional CP violation in the universe but not specifically in neutrinos. CP violation has already been discovered in quarks, though in such small amounts that it does not explain the matter-antimatter imbalance.
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- One place this theory’s missing CP violation might be hiding is the so-called dark sector, the realm of the invisible dark matter that is thought to make up most of the matter in space.
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- Perhaps dark matter and dark antimatter behave differently, and this difference can explain our universe as we know it.
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- Evidence for electroweak baryogenesis could come not just through detecting extra Higgs particles but also via the numerous experiments hunting for dark matter and the dark sector. If a cosmological phase transition occurred shortly after the big bang, it might have produced gravitational waves that could be found by future experiments, such as the “Laser Interferometer Space Antenna” (LISA), a space-based gravitational-wave detector due to launch in the 2030s.
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- Perhaps neither leptogenesis nor electroweak baryogenesis occurred. Nature unravels as it does; we can’t control that. We just try our best to understand it.”
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April 14, 2022 ANTIMATTER - Matter Outnumber Anti-matter? 1393, 1149, 3542
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