Sunday, May 6, 2018

Big Bang Antimatter mystery



- 2065 -  Big Bang Antimatter mystery.  -  According to the Big Bang, the universe began as a point the size of a grain of sand that was unimaginably hot, unfathomably dense, and packed tight with matter and energy.  The environment that produced the particles that make up the universe should have created equal parts matter and antimatter. Yet antimatter  is surprisingly rare.
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-----------------------------  2065  -  Big Bang Antimatter mystery
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-  Thank your lucky stars you’re alive. It’s truly a miracle of nature. This has nothing to do with spirituality or religion and everything to do with science. Life itself may not be the only miracle. Although we haven’t found it elsewhere yet, our galaxy alone is so replete with Earth-like planets that, mathematically speaking, one of them must hold life, even if it is just the microbial variety.  Intelligent life may be another matter.
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-  What scientists say as a result of their latest experiments is: the universe itself is a miracle, as it should not exist at all. This is of course taken in reference to the Big Bang theory. Though the prevailing one, it’s not the only theory to explain how all and everything came into being. Still, in this view, it all starts with the singularity.
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-  According to the Big Bang, the universe began as a point the size of a grain of sand that was unimaginably hot, unfathomably dense, and packed tight with matter and energy. Then it exploded, sending its contents sailing out and eventually, forming the universe as we know it.
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-  There are a few problems with this theory. For one, there’s the increasing rate of universal expansion, known as the Hubble Constant. According to the Big Bang, things should be slowing down, or even contracting. Dark energy is the conventional explanation for why the universe is still expanding at an accelerating rate, even though we can't prove it exists.
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-  There is another problem.   The environment that produced the particles that make up the universe should have created equal parts matter and antimatter. Yet antimatter  is surprisingly rare. Not only that, a 50-50 split would have seen each particle uniting with its polar opposite, creating a burst of unimaginable energy and leaving nothing behind, save a vast void of a universe. And yet, here we are.
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-  One theory is that matter and antimatter must in some way be radically different. But the latest experiments do not find this is the case. According to the Standard Model of physics, which is a  manual for every known particle in the universe and how it operates, states that each type of atom has its polar opposite, its antiparticle, with the same mass, but with an opposite electrical charge.
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-  Scientists have tried to discern what fundamental difference such particles should have, to validate the existence of the universe. They come up empty. Physicists studied the magnetic properties of protons and antiprotons with uncanny precision. The findings supported the Standard Model  as the particles behaved just as it predicts.
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-  All of science observations find a complete symmetry between matter and antimatter, which is why the Universe should not actually exist.  An asymmetry must exist but scientists simply do not understand where the difference is. What is the source of the symmetry break?  When matter and antimatter particles collide, a burst of pure energy is the result. If these were perfectly balanced in the early days of the universe, how could the universe exist at all? 
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-  Protons and antiprotons were the last holdout when it came to particles which could explain the matter-antimatter imbalance. Scientists devised a manner to assess the magnetism of a particle of antimatter that is 350 times more precise than the previously method. The readout was incredible, to nine places!  (-2.7928473441 nuclear magnetons). A proton has the same level of magnetism, only it's positive. Although the study failed to explain our universe’s extreme prejudice towards matter, it did give us a far better understanding of an antiproton’s magnetism.
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-  Antimatter doesn’t last long. As such, it needs to be contained. Researchers used two Penning traps, which are devices that retain antimatter particles using an electrical and a magnetic field.
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-  The measurement of antiprotons was extremely difficult.  They had been working on it for ten years. The final breakthrough came with the revolutionary idea of performing the measurement with two particles. This result is the culmination of many years of continuous research and development, and the successful completion of one of the most difficult measurements ever performed in a Penning trap instrument.
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-  Up until now, scientists have probed the differences between particles and their opposites by comparing their electrical charge, magnetism, and mass. Next they  plan to investigate them in terms of gravity, to see if a discrepancy exists there.  They also will be studying what asymmetry, if any, exists between hydrogen and antihydrogen atoms with additional  plans on further examining antiparticles magnetically.
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-  Perhaps new discoveries will help unravel the secret behind the matter-antimatter imbalance.  Time will tell, but, my time is up.
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 -------------------------   Sunday, May 6, 2018   --------------------------------
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