Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Why Are We Made of Matter?

Posted by timothy on from the better-than-the-alternate dept.

StartsWithABang (3485481) writes "The Universe began with equal amounts of matter and antimatter after the Big Bang, and yet when we look out at today's Universe, we find that, even on the largest scales, it's made of at least 99.999%+ matter and not antimatter. The problem of how we went from a matter-antimatter-symmetric Universe to the matter-dominated one we have today is known as baryogenesis, and is one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics. Where are we on the quest to understand it as of April, 2014? A wonderful and comprehensive recap is here."

9 of 393 comments (clear)

  1. Ah, antimatter by AdamColley · · Score: 5, Funny

    God hid it.

    God is made of it.

    Okay, that's the god excuses out of the way... now on with the physics!

    1. Re:Ah, antimatter by kimvette · · Score: 3, Funny

      Not quite. It's because god squeezed the tube from the middle rather than neatly from the bottom up, leaving a lot left in the tube. So much for omnipotence.

      --
      The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
    2. Re:Ah, antimatter by Bengie · · Score: 4, Funny

      Finally, news that matters.

    3. Re:Ah, antimatter by smittyoneeach · · Score: 3, Funny

      What difference, at this point, does it matter?

      --
      Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
  2. So what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    What does it matter that we're made of matter? Were we made of anti-matter, would it anti-matter to anyone? Don't lose any energy on this matter, because it doesn't fucking matter.

    1. Re:So what? by Eunuchswear · · Score: 5, Funny

      There are 3 kinds of universes -

      1. mostly matter
      2. 50/50
      3. mostly antimatter.

      In type 1 universes everyone is asking "why is everything made of matter".
      type 2 universes are empty.
      type 3 universes electricty flows the right way.

      --
      Watch this Heartland Institute video
    2. Re:So what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      type 3 universes electricty flows the right way.

      Unfortunately the name of the direction is wrong.

  3. Actually... by TubeSteak · · Score: 4, Funny

    By mass, I'm currently ~70% water, ~29.5% matter, and 0.5% cookie dough

    Disclaimer: Do not eat raw cookie dough made with unpasteurized eggs.

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
  4. Why Are We Made of Matter? by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 4, Funny

    Because we travel the way we do through time.

    Antimatter travels through it in the other direction.

    And we when we and the antimatter get all the way from one end of Time to the other--BOOM! It's the end.

    .gninnigeb eht s'tI !MOOB--rehto eht ot emiT fo dne eno morf yaw eht lla teg rettamitna eht dna ew nehw ew dnA

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.