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NASA.
Physicists are facing a matter/antimatter conundrum: they can’t find a good reason to explain why the universe actually exists.
It sounds like a classic episode of classic Star Trek when someone inexplicably shuts down the warp engines, some imminent threat looms, and — right on cue — Scotty says: “Captain, I canna’ change the laws of physics.”
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">On its face, it’s a flight of fancy, a philosophical question akin to how many angels fit on the head of a pin. But it’s actually the logical conclusion from one of the most advanced scientific studies ever conducted and recently published in the journal </span><a href="https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v550/n7676/full/nature24048.html"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Nature</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The experiment looked hard at antiprotons in an attempt to better understand what might have happened just after the </span><a href="https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-powered-the-big-bang"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Big Bang — the cataclysmic event that created the universe billions of years ago.</span></a></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Big Bang was caused by particles and antiparticles crashing into each other in a dance of mutually-assured destruction. We know it occurred because the universe literally glows with the remnants of that collision in what is known as </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">the </span><a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-cosmic-microw/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Cosmic Microwave Background.</span></a></p><p><div data-conversation-spotlight=""></div></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But although we know matter was created after the Big Bang, we don’t know how that matter was created. The theory has always been that, for some unknown reason, that The Big Bang was asymmetrical, with far more particles of one kind, and those particles — mostly matter, enigmatic dark matter, with a dollop of antimatter — were expelled outward on a journey of billions of years to create the universe.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">So far, the experimental results chronicled in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Nature</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> suggest that the subatomic particles were expelled by the Big Bang in equal concentrations, but that answer leads to </span><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/universe-exist-cern-universe-matter-bizarre-behaviour-scientists-a8015216.html"><span style="font-weight: 400;">an inherent contradiction</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. If that’s the case, the Big Bang collision of matter and antimatter would have</span><a href="https://cosmosmagazine.com/physics/universe-shouldn-t-exist-cern-physicists-conclude"><span style="font-weight: 400;"> canceled out both sides of the equation, creating a huge sea of energy, </span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">and nothing that could expand and coalesce into galaxies and solar systems and planets and us.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The research suggesting this baffling result was designed to measure a property of antiprotons that is known as the magnetic moment.</span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“There’s got to be some </span><a href="http://nationalpost.com/news/world/scientists-still-have-no-idea-why-the-universe-exists"><span style="font-weight: 400;">difference between matter and antimatter</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in order to explain what happened to antimatter,” says Makoto Fujiwara, a leading researcher at </span><a href="http://www.triumf.ca"><span style="font-weight: 400;">TRIUMF</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Canada’s national laboratory for particle physics who runs antimatter experiments at CERN in Geneva. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Scientists thought that the answer might be the magnetic moment, suggesting that maybe matter might enjoy a slightly different vector when subjected to a magnetic force than antimatter. If so, that might explain why matter is common in the universe. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It’s been a popular hypothesis, but one that is almost impossible to test because antimatter is as elusive as a leprechaun. Except when you’re an incredibly creative team of researchers.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">To test the hypothesis, </span><a href="http://nationalpost.com/news/world/scientists-still-have-no-idea-why-the-universe-exists"><span style="font-weight: 400;">CERN researchers lead by Christian Smorra used a proton synchrotron to slam a beam of protons into metal</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, thereby create a cascade of elementary particles. Using several brilliant scientific tricks, they were able to collect, cool, and isolate antiprotons to measure their magnetic moment.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Previous experiments had been conducted to answer this question, but the sample sizes were infinitesimal even by the standards of quantum mechanics, and the results simply weren’t precise enough to show any differences between the two opposing particles. Smorra and his team were able to improve on those measurements by several hundred times.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The end result is that we have now defined the magnetic moment of protons and antiprotons to a significant number of decimal points, and they are still identical, though opposite.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">So we’re back to square one, with no clear understanding about why matter survived the Big Bang in far greater concentrations than antimatter.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">For the profoundly religious, such secular experiments are a complete waste of time when faith provides all the answers. But for physicists, delving deeply into the origins of the universe, one of the most essential ways to be fully human, and fully spiritual is to be inquisitive, to always ask why.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality,” </span><a href="http://www.lablit.com/article/577"><span style="font-weight: 400;">wrote</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> astronomer Carl Sagan 20 years ago. “When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual.”</span></p>
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