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.

Comments

We Already Knew That the Universe Shouldn't Exist

[organgtool]

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?

This just proves the scientists failure to underst

[hcs_$reboot]

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.

Re:Today's silly joke

[Daetrin]

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny ...'"
- Isaac Asimov

The universe is not infinitely old

[Geoffrey.landis]

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.

Re: News flash:

[fisted]

I guess that means that at the moment there's insufficient data for meaningful answer.