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Dramatic Difference In Matter Vs. Antimatter

Posted by michael on from the things-that-go-bang dept.

jma34 writes "The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) recently put up a press release announcing a 13% asymmetry between the interactions of matter and anti-matter. In most interactions matter and antimatter are mostly interchangeable, however our universe is matter dominated. This research helps to answer the question of where did all the antimatter go. PRL article here."

5 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. why not? by Sparr0 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    who says the universe is mostly matter? maybe its exactly half and half, they just got segregated really well. There could be entire antimatter galaxies out there and we would never know they werent 'normal' until we tried to visit them. The radiation of random particles (H and anti-H) at the bounds of the galaxies wouldnt be very noticable, if at all.

    1. Re:why not? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Loud? There's few (none?) reactions that release as much energy with so little mass. There should also be place where we'd see such a reaction edge on. That would be hard to miss.

  2. 1606 decays in 200 million pairs by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Something tells me their decay detector is NOT 98% accurate as claimed.

    --
    SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
  3. We can also conclude . . . by Yeechang+Lee · · Score: 1, Interesting

    . . . that, since the area around the Sand Hill Road exit on I-280 in Menlo Park still exists, SLAC has *not* yet succeeded in bringing matter and amtimatter together.

    Yeechang, who worked for two years in that exact location

  4. Quark Mixing? by pubudu · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The CP violation in the decay of B mesons is more noticeable than in the decay of neutral Kaons (K0), so my question isn't entirely offtopic. I'm really confused by neutral kaons and the 'quark mixing' that describes them, and was wondering if anyone could help me out here. Since I can't put a bar over letters or use Greek characters, I'll put antimatter in bold italics and use P for an uppercase 'psi'.

    The composition of K+ makes perfect sense (up and anti-strange), as does that of K- (anit-up and strange). But K0 makes no sense at all (both long and short K0). What is K0-short? (P(d s ) + P( d s)) * 2^-1/2. And K0-long just replaces the '+' with a '-'. I'm told this is due to quark mixing. But I have absolutely know idea what it means to say this. Any help?

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