Day and night, positive and negative, science and faith … The universe is plagued with dualities that not only face as opposites, they also complement each other. And this occurs from the very beginning of the universe. When it occurred The Big Bang, the matter was born by force of violence and explosions. But the first duality was also generated: asymmetry.
So, For each matter particle (electrons, quarks) there is its twin “evil” (anti -allectrones, antiquarks). And, when they are, pum!: They are annihilated in an energy hugYoA pure.
The problem that scientists face is that in the Big Bang it should have created the same amount of both, but today the universe is almost just subject. Where did the antimatter escape? That is the great asymmetry. It is as if The universe would have thrown a dice loaded in the Big Bang and would have said: “Matter: 1, antimatter: 0… because? Just because”.
Now, a new study could have given the reason. But let’s start from the beginning. Imagine the newborn universe: a broth of particles and antiparticles that must be completely annihilated, leaving only energy. But here we are, made of excess matter. As? The answer is in a “small favoritism” “, and the quarks Bottom (the” heavyweights “of the subatomic world).
Physical laws predict perfect symmetry between matter and antimatter, but the visible universe is 99,999% matter. Something broke his balance. In 1967, physicist Andréi Sájarov proposed that, If certain particles disintegrate a little different from their antiparticles, that little violation of symmetry could explain excess matter.
This is when Nature’s new study enters. The article analyzes Quarks Bottom and its antiparticles, Looking for differences in their behavior and the results showed that these quarks disintegrate slightly differently from their anti-quarks.
That mini-preference for matter (an asymmetry of ~ 0.001%) could be the seed So that, after annihilating almost everything, there will be a little matter of matter. The study, led by Xuenting Yang, analyzed millions of collisions in the LHCB (Large Hadron Collider Beauty Experiment) to measure how the Quarks Bottom and their anti-quarks disintegrate.
To do this, protons were collided at 13 Energy Tev (such as recreating the universe to a Millionese second after the Big Bang). Then billion collisions were leaked (yes, billion: 10¹²) To isolate the quarks, some particles live just 1.5 picosegondos.
Then 0.0001% were measured accurately how their disintegrations generated Muones vs. antimunons The surprising thing, in the time of ephemeral current and fragmented attention, is that all this It was achieved over 20 years of data and involved some 3,000 scientists from 50 countries.
The results showed that these quarks tend to transform into certain particles (such as muons) 0.1% less than their antiparticles. It seems little, but in the big bang, That minimal difference could be sufficient to survive 1 particle of matter per billion annihilations.It is as if in the casino of quantum physics, matter would always have won by hair.
But quarks Bottom are not the only “cheats.” The Quarks Strange and Charm also violates symmetry, but too little to explain the universe. We also have electrons and neutrinos, although asymmetry is almost non -existent for them.
In this way, the quarks Bottom are ideal to study this because They are heavy and disintegrate in more varied wayswhich means there is more data to hunt differences.
Why does this matter? Without this asymmetry, the universe would be only radiation. There would be no stars, planets, or biology. In this way, the new study shows that our universe is not symmetrical, and that is good: its “imperfection” allows us to exist. We are the residue of a quantum battle fought 13.8 billion years ago.
There is only one problem in these calculations. The standard model predicts an asymmetry of 0.002%, but the real value is 50 times lower. There are some possible explanations. One is that there could be unknown particles (such as leptocarks or extra dimensions) influencing disintegration.
Another is that there is an error in the standard model: Perhaps the theory underestimate how the quarks interact with the Higgs field. And, finally, we may also see a part of the quantum universe and be drawing hurried conclusions.
The future of scientists is to update the LHCB next year to duplicate the accuracy of measurements and add new collider such as the FCC (Future Circular Collider) that will seek particles predicted by this anomaly.