Matter-Antimatter Bias Seen In Fermilab Collisions

ubermiester writes "The New York Times is reporting that scientists at Fermilab have found evidence of a very small (about 1%) average difference between the amount of matter/antimatter produced in a series of particle collisions. Quoting: '[T]he team, known as the DZero collaboration, found that the fireballs produced pairs of ... muons ... slightly more often than they produced pairs of anti-muons. So the miniature universe inside the accelerator went from being neutral to being about 1 percent more matter than antimatter.' This finding invites theorists to explain why there is so much more matter than antimatter in the universe, when the Standard Model suggests that there should be equal amounts of each." Here is the paper as submitted to Physical Review (PDF). The DZero team is looking forward to getting detailed data from the LHC once it ramps up operationally.

Comments

Re:Uneven laws

[Joey Vegetables]

Nothing we know about the universe or any part of it is in fundamental conflict or contradiction with the Biblical creation story. It's just that there is an awful lot we do not know, about pretty much everything. We speculate based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable (e.g., the speed of light being more or less constant, and other physical laws remaining somewhat constant throughout the universe). That's fine, as long as we remember that this is speculation, not fact. We continue to experiment, and to use some approximation of the scientific method (heavily biased by politics, of course) to try to learn more. That's also fine, as long as we regard what we learn as being always tentative, and always subject to refinement, or even outright abandonment, if further evidence or experimentation renders our original tentative findings invalid.