Large Hadron Collider data hints at explanation for why everything exists Scientists have analyzed data gathered from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider to advance our understanding of why anything exists. That existential statement is necessary because scientists think that the Big Bang produced equal quantities of matter and antimatter, and when the two meet both are annihilated. This raises the thorny …
Yeah, bet you won't feel so smug when CERN's antimatter pick-up truck eventually starts making donuts 'round your comfortably snug corner, rowdily celebrating quantum mechs' 100ᵗʰ with an entangled bunch of drunkhard baryons ... spinning!
Best get yer smartphone's antimatter camera app ready and updated, or else ... poof!
Matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter,
Up-down, up-down,
A-matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter,
Up-down, up-down,
Matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter,
Up-up-down,
Matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter,
Aggh! Higgs! A Higgs!
Higgs! Hiiiigs! Oooo! It's a Higgs!
It's a matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter,
Up-down, up-down
Matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter,
Up-down, up-down
A-matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter,
Up-down, up-down,
Matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter,
U-up-down,
Matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter,
Aggh! Higgs! A Higgs!
Higgs! Hiiiigs! Oooo! It's a Higgs!
Matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter, matter,
U-up-down,
FIFY.
Rather inconvenient if it didn't but then no explanation would be required. :)
As I read it a matter-antimatter asymmetry hitherto unobserved has been observed but the fundamental asymmetry in this universe underlying the imbalance between the two types of matter remains.
Presumably just a matter of chance at the very beginning that between two mutually exclusive paths leading to the creation of matter or antimatter our was chosen. Of course only in an extremely perverse and contrary universe would the inhabitants call their matter antimatter.
Still the question of why one path of matter creation excluded the other remains. Perhaps the physical laws changed in response to the changing composition of universe itself ?
Good stuff at the LHC ! Costs nothing to ask imponderable questions but as the LHC perfectly illustrates, it takes nation state sized buckets of cash to answer even relatively straightforward questions about "life, universe and everything.†"
† I am certain Douglas Adams would appreciate the irony if everything ultimately reduced to two classes, three properties and seven entities. ;)
The Higgs-Boson explains the asymmetry from the start of the universe. Well, its existence can be used to describe the mechanism that led to this.
But the matter/antimatter dichomoty may itself turn out to be yet another seductively convenient, but ultimately flawed theory.
> it takes nation state sized buckets of cash to answer even relatively straightforward questions about "life, universe and everything."
It is way less expensive than you would think.
The CERN's annual budget is under $2 billion ... compare that to the $10 billions spent in 2024 on AI by Musk alone!
> The CERN's annual budget is under $2 billion ... compare that to the $10 billions spent in 2024 on AI by Musk alone!
Yes, but Musk!... You can't compare the incomparable...
/s
Seriously now, it's true that science isn't that expensive compared to some other stuff nobody dares to question. I'm also happy that the CERN isn't an American organization, because they'd been sent home by now. That terrain they occupy would make a great golf course.
Suppose the "big crunch".
Suppose that this asymmetry ratio is valid, and accurate.
Suppose that each time the universe crunches, much of it is annihilated with the anti-matter coming to rest at the same position, but there's more matter than anti-matter. The sudden burst of energy thrusts everything back apart, and the energy to matter conversion creates equal parts matter and anti-matter, of which some decay favors matter.
This repeats, for many universal cycles, until today - when we have the currently detected ratios. Then, how many universes may have come before our current universe, based on the decay ratio vs the observed matter vs anti-matter discrepancy?
There would probably be "bouncing" as not all matter and anti-matter would come to rest at the same "bang" point at the same time, which would inflate the amount of matter present before enough reaction mass came together to provide enough energy for a Bang. Maybe only one universe prior to ours.
Just fun thoughts.
CERN is developing the Future Circular Collider (FCC), which would be significantly larger and more powerful than the LHC. The FCC is envisioned as a 100-kilometer circumference collider, compared to the LHC's 27 kilometers, and would aim to smash particles at higher energies. This project aims to further explore the fundamental laws of physics and potentially discover new particles and
> publish a scientific paper without the conclusion that more research is necessary
Won't happen, ever. By definition, science is infinite, because you can always dig deeper, i.e. wonder why/how something (and their reason!) came to be. It might be turtles all they way down, but a real scientist will a. want to make sure, b. count them, and c. check if the turtles further down are any different from those on the top. And then understand what piled them up like that, and why. And why those turtles haven't just gone away. And so on.
If you want simple certainties, like "That is how it is, and this is all we need to know", you need religion.
(Didn't downvote you though.)
Some years back, I was visited by a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses. I explained up front that they would be wasting their time with me, but that didn't slow them down, so we sat down and chatted a bit.
One mentioned that she'd been a lapsed Catholic, and that part of the appeal of the JW faith was that everything is neatly explained with no loose ends. I replied that I'd pursued a career in science (astronomy and physics) in part because there was always something I didn't know and either could wonder about or try to figure out. Pretty much any answer I get leads to more questions, and I rather like that.
I can sort of, intellectually, see why a system that offers The Total Answer To Everything And That's It appeals to people. I'm obviously not among them.
> But that does not mean every scientific paper needs to plead for more.
Well, IMHO intellectual honesty does require stating that you might not have found the final answer to the given question, and even point to what is most lacking. It's both a call for funding (of course) and for others to delve into it. It's akin to the "known bugs" list serious programmers publish on every new version.
On the other hand I must agree that the struggle for money and the need for publications is perverting the science community, or at least some of its members. We see that every day, but I admit I don't have a (realistic) solution to that.
Science is a process, not an end.
Every discovery that answers a question always raises at least one more. That is, as they say, the point.
When you discover "This is how X", this raises the question "Why is it like that?". When you discover "This is why", that raises the questions "What else does that imply?"
The phone in your pocket is the direct result of a great many "What else?".
And more importantly, every discovery must be repeatable. Someone should be trying to repeat it, to verify that the result was real and not a fluke (or fraud).
we don't understand symmetry properly ?
It seems simple when you draw a line through a shape. But only when you don't start asking "what exactly is this line made of and what is it actually doing ?"
This is me being ignorant, so no need for downvotes. Meanwhile trebles all round for the team here ----->
So basically it remains uknown why we're here and how we're here, but we learnt something. At least CERN hasn't created that blockhole to suck us in physically, only financially. Where does all the money come from? Must be hoping they find something useful for weapons ... or a portal to the underworld ... or ... I'll go take one of my pills.
CERN is actually very cheap.
It has a $1.4 billion USD annual budget, and the LHC cost about $4.75 billion USD to build, funded by the 25 member states and many more associates and observers.
For comparison, the US spends $3.1 billion a year on the Secret Service alone, and the Key Bridge in Baltimore is expected to cost about $2 billion to rebuild- on top of the $100 million already spent clearing the wreckage.
Harvard University has annual operating expenses of $6.4 billion.
The proposed CERN Future Circular Collider is estimated at around $17 billion to build.
So even the FCC would cost the UK the kind of money that the previous UK government wasted on not sending anyone to Rwanda.
OK, I understand that when matter and anti-matter meet they annihilate each other and produce Energy
But is that all the early universe was , just Energy of such high levels that everything was sub-atomic particles anyway until it cooled enough (via expansion) for matter to form
So matter and anti-matter meet, annihilate each other, produce Energy which then forms back to matter as it all cooled.....
"So matter and anti-matter meet, annihilate each other, produce Energy which then forms back to matter as it all cooled.....”
Yes, except that energy would or should (theoretically) have produced equal amount of matter and anti-matter. For example a photon of high enough energy could transform into say an electron. Except that would violate the principle of charge conservation, the photon is electrically neutral, the electron isn’t, where did the negative charge come from?
What actually happens is that a photon might produce an electron - positron pair, charge is conserved, energy is conserved, the two particles go off at angles which conserves momentum as well (yes I know the photon has no mass, but, oddly still has momentum). So you have a matter - antimatter pair, which will could, probably will cause further annihilations. Rinse and repeat!
You actually answered yourself, but missed it. :) (VERY easy to do in this space, by the way.)
The era you need to think about is called recombination. Photons turning into particle-antiparticle pairs which then recombined into photons repeatedly. However, during this era, the universe cools enough that photons stop turning into matter so readily. (AFAIK, this is because the photons now have less energy.) Instead of going a few inches, they can now cross the universe.
This commences the Universe's Dark Ages.
I always assumed the big bang flung matter and antimatter in opposite directions. The matter came this way and the antimatter went that way. The antimatter side of the universe would be equally as large as the matter side: symmetry. Pity we can never see far enough to see the antimatter side. I am not an astrophysicist, obviously!
Unfortunately, there's no particular reason to expect the particles and anti-particles to be sorted that way. They'll fly out at random, with no "particles to this side, antiparticles to this side" about it. (Unless Maxwell's Demon was present to do the sorting. Which would invoke exactly the same problems the hot/cold-particle-sorting Maxwell's Demon did.)
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