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CERN Scientists Conclude that the Universe Should Not Exist (ign.com)
Scientists at CERN are bemused as to why the universe exists, according to a new study. From a report, shared by a reader: Recent discoveries suggest that there's a perfect symmetry between matter and antimatter - meaning it's not clear why they didn't annihilate each other upon the birth of the universe. CERN's latest study sought to find out whether different magnetic properties accounted for matter's seeming victory after the Big Bang, but found another point of symmetry. Essentially, going by our findings so far, there simply shouldn't be a universe. Further reading: Universe shouldn't exist, CERN physicists conclude - Cosmos Magazine.
Since the law of conservation of mass and energy states that matter and energy can not be created then how did it ever come into existence in the first place?
Here is a simple answer; because we are wrong with something. We have known that we are wrong for a while with the X number of unsolved physical problems.
Another study confirms that the Standard Model is incomplete when it was already known. News at 10.
If you study something deeply to comprehend the rules that has the thing working, and you conclude based on these rules that the thing should not exist, then the rules are wrong, or you're missing deeper insights about that object.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny ...'"
- Isaac Asimov
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
The human mind is particularly bad at handling some concepts... like 'infinity' for one. What if the universe always existed, and always will? Why can't it be infinitely long on the time axis as well as the spatial ones?
Because if it had always existed, there would be dead stars that are infinitely (or nearly infinitely) old. But there aren't.
What we do know absolutely for sure is that the universe has not existed infinitely in its current form. Stars don't last forever. Entropy tends toward maximum. If the universe was infinitely old, it would have slid down the curve of entropy to be a featureless mess.
The nature of that event at the beginning (of the universe as we know it), however, is still somewhat unclear. We do see the universe expanding, and that's a clue. We can track it backwards to very small and very dense. But we can't track it backwards to the "beginning," because it gets to realms of energy and density for which we don't know the laws of physics.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Dark matter is one of the few remaining possibilities for the imbalance - if dark matter somehow interacts with anti-matter somewhat less weakly, for some reason. Black holes don't work, since there don't seem to have been any in the early universe, and there's no reason to think they'd prefer anti-matter.
This news is exiting to me, since one way or another it suggests new physics is needed to understand the imbalance.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
No. We're simply not as smart as we think we are. We engage in far too much scientific hubris and are full of ourselves.
We don't understand the universe nearly as well as we think we do.
Science is an iterative process and ultimately the current best guess.
Some of us "anti-intellectuals" recognize this for what it is and are less impressed by pronouncements from the scientific clergy.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> What if the universe always existed, and always will?
Considering that the 1st Law of Thermodynamics says that:
Energy can be neither created nor destroyed.
I would tend to agree with you.
Either
a) The universe has always existed, or
b) God has always existed.
Either way you end up with the atheist's F word: Faith.
I guess that means that at the moment there's insufficient data for meaningful answer.
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When they figure out that there is a God and that He created the Universe. It exists and we exist because He exists. That one's gonna really rock their world.