Why are we here, anyway? No, not in the what’s-the-meaning-of-it-all sense, but why haven’t matter and antimatter completely obliterated each other, the universe and us? In nature, two identical things that are 180° out of phase with each other — as matter and antimatter seem to be — cancel each other out.
So, um, why are we here?In audio, for example, two identical sound waves that are out of phase in this way produce silence:
(OMEGATRON)
So even if, say , you’re talking about identical recordings of something loud like a car horn, you get:
honk =
no honk
So we’ve got a problem with matter and antimatter not doing this, or rather, we should have a problem. Physics’ standard model says that when the universe came into being at the Big Bang, an equal amount of matter and antimatter was generated that should have — in our current understanding — wiped each other out, preventing the universe as we know it from forming.
Scientists have been thinking there must be something we haven’t come across yet that makes matter and antimatter not truly identical. A just-released study in the journal Nature reveals the frustrating outcome of a recent search for that difference at CERN. Christian Smorra, a physicist with their Baryon–Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment (BASE) collaboration, says, “An asymmetry must exist here somewhere but we simply do not understand where the difference is,” because, “All of our observations find a complete symmetry between matter and antimatter, which is why the universe should not actually exist.
”Previously, scientists have tried to find some difference other than polarity in matter and antimatter, measuring their mass and electric charge, and with a study last year of the properties of hydrogen and anti-hydrogen…
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