Why is there any matter in the universe at all? New study sheds light

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by paddoboy, Feb 28, 2020.

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  1. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    https://phys.org/news/2020-02-universe.html

    Why is there any matter in the universe at all?
    New study sheds light:

    Scientists at the University of Sussex have measured a property of the neutron—a fundamental particle in the universe—more precisely than ever before. Their research is part of an investigation into why there is matter left over in the universe, that is, why all the antimatter created in the Big Bang didn't just cancel out the matter.

    The team—which included the Science and Technology Facilities Council's (STFC) Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK, the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland, and a number of other institutions—was looking into whether or not the neutron acts like an "electric compass." Neutrons are believed to be slightly asymmetrical in shape, being slightly positive at one end and slightly negative at the other—a bit like the electrical equivalent of a bar magnet. This is the so-called "electric dipole moment" (EDM), and is what the team was looking for.

    more at link....

    the paper:
    https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.081803


    Measurement of the Permanent Electric Dipole Moment of the Neutron:

    ABSTRACT:
    We present the result of an experiment to measure the electric dipole moment (EDM) of the neutron at the Paul Scherrer Institute using Ramsey’s method of separated oscillating magnetic fields with ultracold neutrons. Our measurement stands in the long history of EDM experiments probing physics violating time-reversal invariance. The salient features of this experiment were the use of a 199Hg comagnetometer and an array of optically pumped cesium vapor magnetometers to cancel and correct for magnetic-field changes. The statistical analysis was performed on blinded datasets by two separate groups, while the estimation of systematic effects profited from an unprecedented knowledge of the magnetic field. The measured value of the neutron EDM is dn=(0.0±1.1stat±0.2sys)×10−26e.cm.

     
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  3. mathman Valued Senior Member

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  5. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    From the above, it looks like the electric dipole moment of the neutron that they measured is zero (within experimental error).

    How does this result shed light on why there is matter in the universe?
     
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  7. Derek.H. Registered Member

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    Interesting , doesn't this suggest to you some type of motion-asymmetry , in the context of the beginning energy-injection which engendered the creation of the early GUT-matter ?
     
  8. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    What "beginning energy injection" would this be? Injection from where to where, and by what?
     
  9. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Paragraphs 5 and 6 seem to suggest newer tests found otherwise.
     
  10. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Oh? Which article (there are several links in this thread)? I had read it the same as James, viz. a null result, to a better precision than previous measurements.
     
  11. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    OK, I guess I misinterpreted what they are saying.
     
  12. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Perhaps.....https://physics.aps.org/articles/v13/25
    "Researchers believe that a more complete theory is likely to involve breaking of the standard model’s so-called CP (charge-parity) symmetry of the strong force, which binds quarks into baryons (such as neutrons and protons). If such a symmetry violation did indeed occur in the early Universe during the formation of baryons, it would explain why there are many more baryons than antibaryons.



    CP violation is predicted to create an asymmetric distribution of quarks inside the neutron, which would result in a nonzero EDM. So a neutron EDM would be a kind of fossil remnant of the symmetry breaking that occurred in the early Universe. And the size of the EDM, if it exists, might offer clues to when the event happened.



    Attempts to measure the neutron EDM have been made since the 1950s [1]. More recently, researchers have also looked for the EDM of the electron [2] and of the nuclei of mercury atoms [3]. An attempt to detect a neutron EDM in 2006 [4] by an international team using the neutron source at the Laue-Langevin Institute (ILL) in France found no sign of it within the experimental uncertainty (an improved data analysis was published in 2015 [5]). A new effort led by Philipp Schmidt-Wellenburg of the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland and Guillaume Pignol of the Laboratory of Subatomic Physics and Cosmology (LPSC) in France has now searched with more sensitivity than any previous experiment".
    extract:
    "At this stage, the tighter constraint on the neutron EDM doesn’t rule out any candidate theories, says Schmidt-Wellenburg. But he adds that the result, taken together with those for other particles such as the electron, suggests that strong CP violation may have occurred earlier than the separation of the electromagnetic force from the weak nuclear force in the early Universe"
     
  13. Derek.H. Registered Member

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    Ahh , a quantum-man I see ! I personally find universe’s exploding up out of quantum fluctuations , just a tad hard to believe . My instincts tend to say "matter/energy cannot be created or destroyed" , so serendipitous creation of universes does not sit well with me . Having said that , I admit to having limited insight into exactly what space/matter/universal.genesis/and the multiverse are . I learned long ago (from Dustin Hoffman) , to say "I don't know" !
    So...your answer lies above .
    D.H.
     
  14. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    That is an emergent property of our universe - the one that got created by the Big Bang.
    There's no reason to assume there was such a property before our universe's properties were set.


    (And what do you mean your "instincts"? Those are usually based on past experiences. How many other 'Beginning of All Creation's have you observed?

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    I've never observed an elephant up close unless it was dead. My instincts should tell me that live elephants are implausible.

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    )
     
    Last edited: Apr 3, 2020
  15. Derek.H. Registered Member

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    But...we're those properties set during the creation , or were they inherent in this universe before it "banged/ expanded.?" . It is possible that space itself was created first , and then continued energy-introduction caused the "pot to boil over" and GUT-matter to be created . This process may not have been instantaneous either , complicating our picture of the "Big-Bang" even further .
    D.H.
     
  16. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    I do not know what you mean by a "quantum man", nor how you deduce I must be one from my question, which you have not answered.

    Can you answer it? What do you mean by "beginning energy injection"? Injection from what into what?
     
  17. Derek.H. Registered Member

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    I deduced that you followed the recent trend of believing that the Universe burst forth from a single , random quantum-fluctuation in a proto-universe .
    Personally , I think that multi-universal physics applied great energy to create the field-matrix of space , and continued to apply energy even when space was "full" . This caused the "pot" to "boil-over" , thus creating the "energy-explosion" we call "The Big-Bang" .
    *As an aside ; Lorentz effects dictate that the more dense things are , the slower time passes in them . This means that in the beginning Universe , time crawled. Thus , a steady and powerful injection of energy then , would appear to be a past explosion, to us now.
    **Capiche ?
    D.H.
     
  18. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Non capiche. What does it mean to say that "multi-universal physics" "applied" energy? Applied it to what? And physics is a discipline of study, not a physical entity.

    Bear in mind also that energy is not stuff: you cannot have a jug of energy. Energy is a property of a physical system of some kind.

    So, all in all, this doesn't seem to make a great deal of sense.
     
    Last edited: Apr 3, 2020
  19. Derek.H. Registered Member

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    Mr. Exchemist ,
    I must differ with you about that energy assertion . Although it is not an object that gets added to a system , it is something . That something is motion (in many forms) , and even has mass . After all , E does equal MC*2 !
    As to extra-universal physics ; that would refer to physical environments/interactions not present in this universe .
    What were they exactly ? Dustin Hoffman !

    D.H.
     
  20. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    While we certainly have no evidence of anything before t+10-43 seconds, we know it was the evolution of space and time [as we know them] and while our certainty on what exactly happened does get more fragile the closer we get to that Planck/quantum time, scientists do reason that at that first instant, the four forces were united into one superforce....as temperatures and pressures started dropping, the superforce started to decouple, gravity first .
    This created phase transitions and false vacuums, and the excesses of energy went into creating/evolving our very first fundamentals like quarks and electrons. At 3 minutes quarks combined to form neutrons and protons and our first atomic nulcei, with continued drops in temps and pressures....at 380,000 years conditions were such that the first basic elements formed when electrons were able to couple with atomic nucleii

    Not sure what else you are trying to propose, but like multiverses it is just speculative at this time.
     
  21. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Not wanting to grace river's irrational and moronic trolling thread, we;ll stick this here.....
    https://home.cern/science/accelerators/antiproton-decelerator

    The Antiproton Decelerator (AD) is a unique machine that produces low-energy antiprotons for studies of antimatter, and “creates” antiatoms. The Decelerator produces antiproton beams and sends them to the different experiments.

    A proton beam that comes from the PS (Proton Synchrotron) is fired into a block of metal. These collisions create a multitude of secondary particles, including lots of antiprotons. These antiprotons have too much energy to be useful for making antiatoms. They also have different energies and move randomly in all directions. The job of the AD is to tame these unruly particles and turn them into a useful, low-energy beam that can be used to produce antimatter.

    The antiprotons, which emerge from the block at diverging angles, are focused before they reach the AD. Only a fraction of them have the right energy to be injected into and stored in the AD.

    The AD is a ring composed of bending and focussing magnets that keep the antiprotons on the same track, while strong electric fields slow them down. The spread in energy of the antiprotons and their deviation from their track is reduced by a technique known as “cooling”. Antiprotons are subjected to several cycles of cooling and deceleration until they are slowed down to around a tenth of the speed of light. They are then ready to be ejected into the antimatter experiments.
    :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

    ELENA (Extra Low ENergy Antiproton) is a new deceleration ring that will soon be commissioned. Coupled with the AD, this synchrotron, with a circumference of 30 metres, will slow the antiprotons even more, reducing their energy by a factor of 50, from 5.3 MeV to just 0.1 MeV. An electron cooling system will increase the beam density. The number of antiprotons that can be trapped will be increased by a factor of 10 to 100, improving the efficiency of the experiments and paving the way for new experiments.

    Installed in 2000, the AD made the headlines in 2002 when large numbers of antihydrogen atoms were produced for the first time. Initial attempts were made to store antiatoms for a long enough time to be able to measure their characteristics. In 2011, an experiment announced that it had produced and trapped antihydrogen atoms for sixteen minutes, which was long enough to be able to study their properties in detail. The following year, the first measurement of the antihydrogen spectrum was published. Since 2010, the AD experiments have published numerous measurements of antimatter characteristics, comparing them to those of matter.

    Currently the AD serves several experiments that are studying antimatter and its properties ALPHA, ASACUSA, ATRAP and BASE. Two other experiments, AEGIS and GBAR, are preparing to study the effects of gravity on antimatter. GBAR will be the first experiment to use antiprotons prepared by ELENA, the new decelerator.
    :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
    Anti matter has been manufactured and studied in particle accelerators, and such experiments lead to the fact that matter and anti matter annihilate.
     
  22. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Obviously the elegant equations as per Paul Dirac in giving two solutions [one matter, the other anti matter] before anti matter was discovered, shows precisely how incredibly important and predictable mathematics is, as the language of physics.
     
  23. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Any sign on the horizon of a antistupidity beam?

    Great article

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