One Of The Universe's Secrets Has Fallen

actiondan writes: "The BBC has a story about scientists uncovering one of "natures best kept secrets" Apparently, they have discovered the "secret of matter" which allows the universe to exist." Yes, you can go home now -- because "the tiny difference in the decay rates of neutral K mesons and their antiparticles has been determined with a precision of one part in a million."

Comments

BBC article explains it a bit better.

[quiller]

The headline is fine, but the text made it seem a lot less important than it is.

Quick synopsis for people: Observation and models had shown that there is an equal chance for matter and anti-matter to be created from energy. The question therefore was why is the universe composed almost exclusively of matter, and not anti-matter? This experiment shows that for the particle studied, there was a measurable difference in the decay rate of anti-matter versus matter. So some matter would stick around longer than the equivalent anti-matter, and multiplied by the nigh-infinite amounts we are dealing with, creates the universe we are in. (The rest gets converted back to energy which will split up into matter and anti-matter again, and continue the process of creating just a bit more matter)

Re:BBC article explains it a bit better.

[SIGFPE]

But when people ask why there is more matter than anti-matter and the respose is that anti-matter decays faster it's practically a circular answer like explaining that morphine works because it contains soporific agents. Almost everyone's immediate question is "Well why does it decay faster?" and to that there is as yet no reasonable answer. This is an interesting result for physicists but it really does nothing to answer the deep questions posed by either the Slashdot article or the BBC article.
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