Results in on why life, the universe and everything exists

It's one of the most difficult questions that human philosophy and science have ever faced: Why are we here? Why is the universe and all that's in it here? The question becomes particularly knotty when one reflects on modern physics and the issue of antimatter. Theory shows that at the creation of the universe, equal amounts …

[Richard Wharram]

Nomenclature is not ontology

Because we define the stuff around us as matter.

[Anonymous John]

Matter attracts matter

But what about matter and anti-matter? It would explain a lot if they repelled each other, but I don't know if our present theories allow it.

I doubt that we have created enough anti-matter yet for experimental proof.

[Filippo]

Matter attracts anti-matter normally.

[arrbee]

occam

So we have

a) where has all the anti-matter gone

b) there is load of mysterious 'dark matter/energy' but we don't know what it is or where its come from

Hmm.

[JeffyPooh]

It's actually quite simple...

Most of the time we're not here.

[tirk]

@Chad H.

We can be pretty sure that Pluto (or other significant bits of the Solar System) isn't made of antimatter because we would see the affect of meteors and the like hitting it, for one reason. Comet Shumaker-Levy 9 produced an impact of the order ot 6,000,000MT when it hit Jupiter in 1994, though pure kinteic energy. You needed a small telescope to see that. Had it been composed of antimatter, the energy released would have been somewhat larger, about 4x10^10MT, or about the same energy as the entire sun emits in 1 second. I doubt a telescope would be necessary to see that, or possibly even eyes! Smaller things must hit Pluto often enough for someone to have noticed.

[Mr Spindles]

The Real Answer...

Roving bands of renegade Higgs particles?

[Michael Dunn]

@Mr Spindles

Roving bands of renegade Higgs particles?

They'd be in starships, of course, guided by Higgs Bosuns.

(Incidentally, what sort of spell checker doesn't know what a bosun is?)

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Reg, we need a scientific opinion.....

Since nothing should exist, can Reg readers tell our collective bosses that "I shouldn't have to do this" when we get our next task assigned??

Beer icon, because drinking a cold one (or a cool one in the UK) is something that I think most of us would be willing to do...

[Stoneshop]

Well

Isn't what we think we're observing as "the universe around us", lack of antimatter and all, simply part of Deep Thought's program to find the question to its answer? In other words, isn't it just a bunch of input and program parameters tweaked to make the program run?

[Michael Dunn]

Well!

You'd have to ask the mice!

[Ian Ferguson]

Simple answer

You don't exist.

I do, but you don't. My only reference point is my own consciousness, and I have no conclusive proof that any other consciousness exists, or even that anything outside my consciousness exists. All this sensory input could be simulated or even the delusional imagination of my isolated mind.

If that's too much for you, just believe in some god or something.

[Steven Roper]

Solipsism FTW!

While I would love to agree with you on principle if nothing else, I hold that if I were the only thing in actual existence, then my control over my existence would be absolute. Which means I wouldn't be working a day job, in fact I wouldn't even get out of bed, because everything would just be done for me as and when I wished by a harem of hot virgins.

Since, however, that is not the case, and I have to do some things and will be punished if I do others, I have to accept that something, regardless of what form it takes as opposed to my perception of it, exists outside of myself and beyond my control. That something, I call "the Universe".

TL;DR If nothing exists outside yourself why can't you control what you experience?

[Andy Fletcher]

Uncertainty Principle strikes again

From what I've read the uncertainty principle was/is the answer to this one. On the face of it, all the matter & anti-matter created at the big bang should have been equally balanced. But that would violate the uncertainty principle, so there was a teansy weansy imbalance which we now refer to as "everything".

[Michael Dunn]

You've got it, Andy.

At the big bang, a vastly greater universe was actually produced with almost equal amounts of matter and anti-matter, which mutually annihilated each other, and now what's left is the tiny amount of matter that was in excess. Of course it now looks fairly big to us, but that's surely only our perspective.

[Lars]

How and "why"

"Why are we here? Why is the universe and all that's in it here?"

"It's one of the most difficult questions", well, I find it still more difficult to believe there was no universe at all. Just look out the window.

So if is hard to understand then the theory is wrong and we lack knowledge.

There is a limit to how much an Ape can grasp and I suppose there must be a limit to how much we can ever grasp too.

In one hundred years we will still look for answers to questions we don't understand.

So what, everything is OK as long as we ask questions.

[David_H]

Anti-matter black holes

I could theorise over that being where all the anti-mater is - please pay me more than IT does.

I'll also theorise over anti-photons eminating from the anti-event horizon that we can't see and so therefore can't prove or disprove.

[It'sa Mea... Mario]

20.12.2012 (or is it 21.12.2012?)

Maybe the end of the Mayan calendar is he point at which the universe itself* actually catches on to the idea that it should not exist? (and vanishes in a puff of logic**..?)

*or a critcal mass of the beings living inside it

**or a massive*** matter meeting antimatter explosion (hence icon)

*** read: apocolyptic.

[Wilseus]

Someone more knowledgeable than me please correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't scientists a few years ago discover an explanation for all this, namely CP violation?

[Disco-Legend-Zeke]

...And, You Know, Everything. or Yin Yang Redeaux.

1. In the beginning, there were only photons.

2. They were compressed into a firecracker the size of a pinhead.

3. These compressed photons inflated into proper photons.

4. There was not enough space for all the photons, so they orbited around each other forming into all manner of quarks and their antimatter counterparts, destroying each other, and reforming .

5. As we can see from cosmic background images, these processes did not proceed uniformly.

CONJECTURE: That certain patterns favored the creation of right handed matter.

[Dorobuta]

of course, we could be in the middle of a huge annihilation event, that to an observer outside of out universe would maybe be a few nano-seconds in duration. While to us, inside the event, it is taking so long we aren't aware of it. (Along the lines of what happens when you cross the event horizon of a black hole.)

the theorists could be correct and not have any means to see the proof.

Bummer.

[John Savard]

Like the Babel Fish

If science says that the Universe shouldn't exist, but it does, that's a dead giveaway that God has been rigging the game. But if He is supposed to depend on faith...

[Meph]

Circular argument

The trouble with Douglas Adams's logic puzzle though, is that it rapidly becomes a chicken vs egg argument. If God created everything, but is nothing without faith, then what was his source of faith prior to creating everything?

[Anonymous Coward]

But he could see and feel the future faith!

[Lucky2BHere]

Why, indeed

For all the erudite contributors to this discussion - and at least it's rather comforting to see some people are actually thinking hard - please read the article again and tell us all what this has to do with why. Granted, attempting to know how is fun. But, that pesky why question will never be answered. At least in the state of energy we are in at the moment. The author should be more careful in choosing his words, or he might sound a bit uninformed.

[json]

once upon a time, the best scientific minds of a great civilization embarked on an experiment to finally answer the question of matter and anti-matter (and why there are more of the former).. their experiments always returned inconclusive data until finally they decided to make one big experiment. Finally, the day arrived when they could finally turn on switch and when they did...

...poof!

...14 billions years later, the best scientific minds of the planet earth...

[Schultz]

science and bullshit

"10-year study indicates that theoretically [life] shouldn't [exist]"

That subtitle is just plain wrong. The study shows that physicists do not understand how matter and everything else came into being. Not being able to show how something works is different from showing how something doesn't work.

[Maryland, USA]

"Why is there something rather than nothing?"

The question was answered decades ago in a paper in the American Scientist: There's something rather than nothing because "nothing" is unstable.

[Glenn Charles]

simple

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(500th reference, I think I win a prize of some kind.)