Recently, scientists working at Cern (the largest particle physics laboratory in the world) completed another experiment and made a stunning conclusion: the universe should not exist!
This is an extremely surprising and extremely confusing discovery, when according to the results of their research, our universe simply should not exist.
The smartest physicists in the world have no idea on what basis the Universe dear to us exists. Indeed, according to their modeling, it should have collapsed at the moment of inception, when equal amounts of matter and antimatter, in fact, should have mutually killed themselves.
It should be noted that the preliminary conclusions of scientists refer us to the topic of long-standing discussions: our Universe is real exclusively for us. In fact, this universe is a computer simulation, as one of the hypotheses suspects.
As Cosmos Magazine notes, "… the standard model predicts that the Big Bang should have produced the same amount of matter and antimatter, but it is a brutally combustible mixture that would destroy itself, leaving nothing behind, to spawn galaxies, planets and humans."
Many scientists theorized why this did not happen, suggesting various reasons - different mass of matter, different electric charges, or other other characteristics. But so far they cannot come to a consensus on this issue.
To try to explain, or at least understand the mystery, physicists have spent decades trying to find the differences between matter and antimatter. There must be some discrepancy to explain why the matter around us was able to dominate.
For this purpose, extremely accurate measurements of all kinds of properties of particles and antiparticles were carried out: mass, electric charges … but the smallest difference between them has not yet been found.
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Now a group of scientists from CERN has managed to capture antiprotons in special "Penning traps." The researchers managed to find out their identity to the equivalents of matter, with the exception of the opposite electric charge.
“This significant achievement in a very short period of time has been made possible by new methods,” said Stephan Ulmer, a spokesman for the research team that carried out the study.
Observations by specialists in physical processes have revealed an identity between matter and antimatter. From which a somewhat strange conclusion followed that the Universe, in general, should not exist,”explains Christian Smorra, the author of the work carried out at CERN.
Asymmetry should be present here, but today we do not understand where to reveal the difference and what is the source of symmetry breaking.
Researchers now hope to study antiprotons "deeper" to understand the complex mystery of the universe.
The galactic search will continue
After the researchers did not find any difference in the magnetic moment, hopes are now placed on the next experiment, "ALPHA". Scientists will study the effects of gravity on antimatter and try to find out if they differ in anything from ordinary matter. If so, one of the greatest cosmic mysteries will be solved once and for all.
If not, then researchers will have to keep looking for the reason why antimatter didn't destroy us immediately after the Big Bang.
By updating the experiment with several new technical innovations, we feel we can do more. In the future, after the CERN update, which is expected to be completed in 2021, we will be able to achieve at least a tenfold improvement in performance, Smorra concluded optimistically.