Your theories on anti-matter?

[nightsky]

Recently I saw a video where scientist believe that we should not exist. They came up with a formula which shows that during the big bang there should have been equal parts of anti-matter and matter.  This would mean that matter and anti matter would constantly come into contact and exploding making it impossible for anything to survive. Also, all we see is matter all around us so scientist wonder where is all the anti-matter? This is just for fun, what are your theories on our existence considering this?

I have no prior education in astronomy or cosmology but one Idea I've been able to come up with is during the big bang both anti-matter and matter came out in opposite directions during the explosion. Maybe some kind of interaction caused this split to happen that we yet haven't thought of. This to me would explain why we don't constantly see anti-matter and matter coming into contact with each other and also why we can't see anti-matter. The distance may be too great for us to see it from where we stand.

[Moontanman]

Something like this? 

 

[nightsky]

35 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

Something like this? 

 

Yes like that! Interesting, I wasn't the only one who thought of this idea. It seems like anti matter and matter expanding in opposite direction is the more probable way for this to be possible that I can think of. If anti matter and matter expanded in more of a random mixture then that would seem more improbable for our existence. I wonder if there are any more theories out there as well.

[Moontanman]

11 minutes ago, nightsky said:

Yes like that! Interesting, I wasn't the only one who thought of this idea. It seems like anti matter and matter expanding in opposite direction is the more probable way for this to be possible that I can think of. If anti matter and matter expanded in more of a random mixture then that would seem more improbable for our existence. I wonder if there are any more theories out there as well.

I don't know, I googled this one to death thinking it had to be out there someplace, evidently it was but it wasn't widely respected.. 

[Strange]

6 hours ago, nightsky said:

Maybe some kind of interaction caused this split to happen that we yet haven't thought of.

The trouble is, there isn't a known mechanism for this to happen. However, people have looked for the possibility that there are, for example, some galaxies made of anti matter. So far there is no good evidence for this. And if, as you suggest, the anti matter could be so far away that we can never see it, then its hard to see how we could get any evidence of it.

[swansont]

7 hours ago, Moontanman said:

Something like this? 

 

!

Moderator Note

Please don't advertise speculations threads in other discussions. It's one of the things we specifically call out in rule 2.5

Responses should be mainstream science.

 

[ManifestDragon]

There is a theory where there was the slightest bit more of matter at the beginning of our universe than anti-matter. Some scientists believe that universes pop up very quickly, but less than around 10^(-30) percent have had a slight oddity that caused either more antimatter or matter to exist. The universes full of anti-matter could come in contact with universes full of matter and explode. Even though 10^(-30) percent is obviously a very, very tiny number, a universe-sized glob of anti-matter exploding will probably cause more energy to be created than all the energy in our universe today. This would cause more universes to pop up, causing more explosions. But, it is also very unlikely universes will bump into each other. Who knows? Maybe when they touch, the explosions only travel across the universe at the speed of light, which could take very, very long, considering that it would take around 200 million ot 400 million years for light to go across our galaxy.

All your theories are fascinating, and who knows what the truth is?

 

Cool

This is possible though

[beecee]

The reason for the obvious imbalance of matter over anti matter, is as far as I know, still unknown at this time. But an interesting observation is the scenario that if there would have been more anti matter then matter, we would be calling that anti matter, matter, and matter, anti matter, if you know what I mean.  

 

https://home.cern/topics/antimatter/matter-antimatter-asymmetry-problem

extract from above link....

"In the past few decades, particle-physics experiments have shown that the laws of nature do not apply equally to matter and antimatter. Physicists are keen to discover the reasons why. Researchers have observed spontaneous transformations between particles and their antiparticles, occurring millions of times per second before they decay. Some unknown entity intervening in this process in the early universe could have caused these "oscillating" particles to decay as matter more often than they decayed as antimatter.

Edited February 26, 2018 by beecee

[Airbrush]

Extract from the above link:

"...A coin has a 50-50 chance of landing on its head or its tail, so if enough coins are spun in exactly the same way, half should land on heads and the other half on tails. In the same way, half of the oscillating particles in the early universe should have decayed as matter and the other half as antimatter."

I don't understand why they suppose that EXACTLY half the spinning coins should end up heads and exactly half should end up tails.  That is not how probability works.  Is it so hard to imagine that a billion atoms of antimatter annihilate against one billion AND ONE matter atoms, leaving a tiny majority as matter?

In that case the universe would be about one billionth of the amount of matter and antimatter that was originally created in the big bang.

 

[Strange]

17 minutes ago, Airbrush said:

I don't understand why they suppose that EXACTLY half the spinning coins should end up heads and exactly half should end up tails. 

That isn’t what it says. 

 

18 minutes ago, Airbrush said:

Is it so hard to imagine that a billion atoms of antimatter annihilate against one billion AND ONE matter atoms, leaving a tiny majority as matter?

That a bit like saying, why couldn’t 1 billion minus 1 billion and 1 equal zero. 

That is what we appear to see but the question is why. 

[interested]

In the zero energy universe theory matter and antimatter are assumed to both have positive energy, which is cancelled by a -ve energy in the form of gravity, giving the total energy of the universe a value of near zero. Heres a couple of links https://www.astrosociety.org/publication/a-universe-from-nothing/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-energy_universe. The whole idea seems to be that some quantum fluctuations became excitations, ie virtual particles became real particles. 

 

30 minutes ago, Airbrush said:

Is it so hard to imagine that a billion atoms of antimatter annihilate against one billion AND ONE matter atoms, leaving a tiny majority as matter?

The result of the annihilation would still be +ve energy in the form of gamma rays, and that energy has to come from somewhere, unless it was always there. 

Edited February 27, 2018 by interested

[swansont]

1 hour ago, Airbrush said:

Extract from the above link:

"...A coin has a 50-50 chance of landing on its head or its tail, so if enough coins are spun in exactly the same way, half should land on heads and the other half on tails. In the same way, half of the oscillating particles in the early universe should have decayed as matter and the other half as antimatter."

I don't understand why they suppose that EXACTLY half the spinning coins should end up heads and exactly half should end up tails.  That is not how probability works.  

They are using the expected average result, and it's an analogy to help people understand. Try not to read too much into it. 1000000001 vs 999999999  does not represent what we observe.

With matter and antimatter, there are conservation laws in play. If they strictly hold, you expect an even split. We have not observed violations that come close to explaining hat we see.

[Airbrush]

1 hour ago, Strange said:

That isn’t what it says. 

 

That's a bit like saying, why couldn’t 1 billion minus 1 billion and 1 equal zero. 

That is what we appear to see but the question is why. 

What do you mean by "that isn't what it says"?  What DOES the link say/mean?

I don't know what you mean by it is like saying "Why couldn't 1 billion [antimatter particles] minus 1 billion and 1 [matter particles] equal zero?  That question makes no sense to me.  What point are you trying to make?  You know a lot more about cosmology and other sciences than I do.

Edited February 27, 2018 by Airbrush

[Strange]

29 minutes ago, Airbrush said:

What do you mean by "that isn't what it says"?

It doesn't say "EXACTLY half the spinning coins should end up heads and exactly half should end up tails."

(And, more importantly, as swansont says, it is just an analogy, and not very accurate.)

29 minutes ago, Airbrush said:

I don't know what you mean by it is like saying "Why couldn't 1 billion [antimatter particles] minus 1 billion and 1 [matter particles] equal zero?  That question makes no sense to me.  What point are you trying to make?  You know a lot more about cosmology and other sciences than I do.

We know that one particle annihilates with exactly one anti-particle (so, 1 - 1 = 0). But you are suggesting that, somehow, there can be a slight mismatch so that 1,000,000,000 - 1,000,000,001 = 0. However, you have no explanation for how this could happen. And that is what is missing: an explanation.

We already know that there is some mismatch between mater and antimatter, but it doesn't appear to be enough to account for the amount of matter we see. So we have a partial explanation. 

(Sorry if I was a bit brief/cryptic before: I was on my phone!)

[Airbrush]

2 hours ago, Strange said:

...We know that one particle annihilates with exactly one anti-particle (so, 1 - 1 = 0). But you are suggesting that, somehow, there can be a slight mismatch so that 1,000,000,000 - 1,000,000,001 = 0. However, you have no explanation for how this could happen....

Do we know that the big bang created the SAME number of particles as anti-particles?  From the Science Channel docs I've seen they don't mention any issue about that, only that for a given number of matter particles, there were fewer anti-particles created at the big bang.  So when annihilation occurred, there remained no anti-particles but only matter particles.

Edited February 27, 2018 by Airbrush

[Strange]

4 minutes ago, Airbrush said:

Do we know that the big bang created the SAME number of particles as anti-particles? From the Science Channel docs I've seen they don't mention any issue about that, only that for a given number of matter particles, there were fewer anti-particles created at the big bang.  So when annihilation occurred, there remained a few more matter particles than anti-particles.

My (limited) understanding is that it is generally thought that different amounts of matter and antimatter were formed initially and so these didn't quite cancel out. 

[Airbrush]

1 minute ago, Strange said:

My (limited) understanding is that it is generally thought that different amounts of matter and antimatter were formed initially and so these didn't quite cancel out. 

Exactly!

[Strange]

35 minutes ago, Airbrush said:

Exactly!

If that is what you were saying (in your “billions” comment) then I apologise for getting completely the wrong end of the stick!

[NortonH]

11 hours ago, Airbrush said:

Do we know that the big bang created the SAME number of particles as anti-particles?  From the Science Channel docs I've seen they don't mention any issue about that, only that for a given number of matter particles, there were fewer anti-particles created at the big bang.  So when annihilation occurred, there remained no anti-particles but only matter particles.

That theory has been around for a bit and raises and interesting problem. If it is assumed that matter and anti-matter were created from a random process (if!), then the imbalance today gives an indication of the likely total produced before annihilation. This is a vast amount and the MLE is N^2 where N is the number of particles of matter today. The radiation from the annihilation is missing.

[beecee]

8 minutes ago, NortonH said:

That theory has been around for a bit and raises and interesting problem. If it is assumed that matter and anti-matter were created from a random process (if!), then the imbalance today gives an indication of the likely total produced before annihilation. This is a vast amount and the MLE is N^2 where N is the number of particles of matter today. The radiation from the annihilation is missing.

Science, particularly cosmology, is a discipline in continued progress. The BB remains the most popular supported theory of the evolution of the universe/space/time from t+10-43 seconds, and is overwhelmingly supported by the main pillars of evidence.

As detailed in the following, while the obvious imbalance between matter and anti matter is still unsolved, there is investigations in progress......

https://home.cern/topics/antimatter/matter-antimatter-asymmetry-problem

extract from above link....

"In the past few decades, particle-physics experiments have shown that the laws of nature do not apply equally to matter and antimatter. Physicists are keen to discover the reasons why. Researchers have observed spontaneous transformations between particles and their antiparticles, occurring millions of times per second before they decay. Some unknown entity intervening in this process in the early universe could have caused these "oscillating" particles to decay as matter more often than they decayed as antimatter.

 

[Strange]

2 hours ago, NortonH said:

The radiation from the annihilation is missing.

At that time the universe was so dense that it was opaque. Any photons  produced would be almost immediately absorbed (and re-emitted and absorbed ...)

It wasn’t for another 380,000 years that the universe cooled enough (to about 4000K) to be transparent. At that point light could travel significant distances. And we still see the radiation from that time. 

[NortonH]

OK. Let me out in another way. The energy is missing. N^2 particles produces quite a lot of energy.

[Strange]

5 minutes ago, NortonH said:

OK. Let me out in another way. The energy is missing. N^2 particles produces quite a lot of energy.

They don’t create any more energy than they have to start with as mass.

[swansont]

18 hours ago, Airbrush said:

Do we know that the big bang created the SAME number of particles as anti-particles?  From the Science Channel docs I've seen they don't mention any issue about that, only that for a given number of matter particles, there were fewer anti-particles created at the big bang.  So when annihilation occurred, there remained no anti-particles but only matter particles.

I don't think it matters; it boils down to the same conservation law/symmetry being violated (CP conservation). It's just an issue of when it was violated, and we have yet to observe violations at the necessary scale.

I think there may be problems with this position, too. If the matter and antimatter were charged, there should be leftover charge.

[NortonH]

19 minutes ago, Strange said:

They don’t create any more energy than they have to start with as mass.

Correct. And if we know N and we assume (IF!) that the leftover matter is the result of a chance imbalance after a binary matter/antimatter producing process then the most likely estimate of the original number of particles in the universe is N^2. We know what N is hence we know what N^2 is hence we know how many we expect to have been annihilated (N^2-N) and this gives us an estimate of how much non-matter energy should be out there. It does not seem to be there.