Is there a scientific reason why the universe exists? In other words, what is the science of why there is something rather than nothing?
The answer relates to the opposite. Scientists have discovered that the universe exists because it started with a slight imbalance between matter and antimatter. Particles of matter – that is, all electrons, protons, neutrons of ordinary atoms and molecules – unlike antimatter particles, carry opposite charges, but in many ways they are similar.
Matter and antimatter don’t get along well. When particles collide, they disappear from each other by a violent burst of gamma rays. Fortunately, antimatter is extremely rare. Antimatter had a fundamental role in the formation of the universe, but the fact that it is no longer present at all is one of the great mysteries of cosmology.
Antimatter was predicted by British physicist Paul Dirac as part of his pioneering work on quantum mechanics almost a century ago and has been confirmed experimentally since the 1930s. Today, scientists can create antimatter in particle corridors, such as large hadron corridors.
However, according to Pasquale di Bali, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Southampton in the UK, Dirac predicted that there should be equal amounts of matter and antimatter, so now there is little antimatter and once suggested there is “antigasic” including stars in every galaxy in every galaxy in the universe.
Related: Does the quantum universe really exist?
“I think the universe started out as a 50-50 material ant timatta in the Big Bang, but soon afterwards it was ruled by material,” said Tara Sears, a particle physicist at the University of Liverpool. “To make this happen, there must be very slight differences or asymmetry in the behavior of matter and antimatter.
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However, “This difference is not predicted, understood, and certainly not explained,” Shears continued. “Understanding this difference is a problem we want to solve. It’s a problem with the problem and the countermeasurement.”
According to Dirac, the terms “problem” and “antimatter” are almost arbitrary. “Material” refers to normal particles, and “antimatter” refers to antiparticles, but this could have been the opposite. If they barely disappeared, the anti-matting particles could have formed a universe of antiatoms and anti-variables. Ultimately, everything that prevailed was named matter, and the opposite was named antimatter.
The leftovers of the universe
Physicists are trying to use particle collision-type observations, traces of antimatter decay in astronomical spectra, and gravitational waves to better understand why this huge future contradiction exists in the universe that produced everything it contains.
Di Bari estimates that before most of the first fractions after the Big Bang, there were billions of times more material and antimatter particles than they now had before they disappeared from each other. “What we’re making is leftovers,” he told Live Science.
Raymond Volkas, theoretical particle physicist at the University of Melbourne, added that the reasons for the asymmetry were outlined in 1967 by Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov. (Sakharov, a critic of the Soviet system, was sentenced to “internal exile” in 1980 due to political opposition. He was released in 1986 and died in 1989.)
Sakharov proposed that asymmetry exists because matter and antimatter particles are not exactly opposite and react differently to basic forces in certain situations. This phenomenon is known as “C and CP violations.”
The general principle of “C and CP violations” is known, but details are not, Volkas told Live Science in an email. “There’s a lot of possibilities at the table!” he said. “The challenge is to distinguish them experimentally.”
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