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Physicists Investigate Why Matter and Antimatter Are Not Mirror Images (economist.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: As mismatches go, it's a big one. When physicists bring the Standard Model of particle physics and Einstein's general theory of relativity together they get a clear prediction. In the very early universe, equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have come into being. Since the one famously annihilates the other, the result should be a universe full of radiation, but without the stars, planets and nebulae that make up galaxies. Yet stars, planets and nebulae do exist. The inference is that matter and antimatter are not quite as equal and opposite as the models predict.

This problem has troubled physics for the past half-century, but it may now be approaching resolution. At CERN, a particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, three teams of researchers are applying different methods to answer the same question: does antimatter fall down, or up? Relativity predicts "down", just like matter. If it falls up, that could hint at a difference between the two that allowed a matter-dominated universe to form.

5 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Problem? by fibonacci8 · · Score: 3, Funny

    “In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

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    Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
  2. Re:1st question. by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Funny

    Very, very carefully.

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    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  3. The extra is in by vlad30 · · Score: 4, Funny

    The goatee that antimatter seems to have of course its not an exact mirror image

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    Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
  4. Re:1st question. by MichaelSmith · · Score: 3, Funny

    That sounds very improbable.

  5. Re:1st question. by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 5, Funny

    Very, very carefully.

    If all the antimatter ever made by humans were annihilated at once, the energy produced would be just about enough to make a cup of tea.

    Or, at the very least, something almost, but not quite entirely unlike tea.

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    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .