SCIENTIFIC EDUCATIONAL CENTER science idea

Antimatter, as far as we know, is a perfect "mirror image" of ordinary matter, the only real difference between these two antipodes is the opposite electric charges. And, when an antimatter particle comes into contact with a particle of ordinary matter, they both die, destroying each other in a burst of energy. Complicating the above, we can say that some particles, such as photons, are also their own antiparticles. Moreover, thanks to a mysterious quirk of the quantum world called the superposition state, such particles can be antiparticles at the same time. This, in turn, means that such particles constantly oscillate, passing from the normal state to the antiparticle state and vice versa.

And recently, a new member has joined the" club " of such exceptional particles — the charm meson. Such a normal particle consists of an enchanted quark and an antiquark, while an equivalent antiparticle consists of an enchanted antiquark and a quark. Usually these two states do not overlap, however, scientists have recently discovered that enchanted mesons can spontaneously transform into their antiparticle and vice versa.

What allowed the scientists to draw such conclusions is a very small difference between the mass of a particle and an antiparticle. The mass difference is only 0.000000000000000000000000000000000001 grams.

This incredibly accurate mass measurement was performed by physicists from the University of Oxford, who conducted an in-depth analysis of a set of data collected during the second cycle of the Large Hadron Collider, the largest and most powerful particle accelerator to date. Enchanted mesons are sometimes formed as a result of proton collisions in the collider, and these mesons manage to move a few millimeters in space before they begin to break up into other particles.

Comparing the trajectories of the charmed mesons, the scientists became interested in those specimens that managed to survive longer and travel a greater distance during this time. This is how the difference in mass was discovered, which was mentioned just above, which was the answer to the question: can a meson enchanted spontaneously turn into a meson enchanted antimeson?

The discovery of a particle and its antiparticle, which have a tiny difference in mass, is of great importance for modern physics, astrophysics and cosmology. After all, according to the Standard Model of Particle Physics, an equal amount of matter and antimatter was formed in the universe during the Big Bang. Over time, matter and antimatter would mutually destroy each other, which would make the entire cosmos a completely empty place. It is obvious that something went wrong in this, because in the vastness of the modern Universe, we observe many cosmic objects of various scales, consisting of ordinary matter.

One hypothesis that can explain the observed discrepancy between the amount of matter and antimatter in the universe is the assumption that particles like the enchanted meson more often make the transition from antimatter to matter than the transition in the opposite direction. Research on whether this assumption is true, and if so, why-can give people the answer to one of the most important mysteries of modern science.

The study was submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters and is currently available on the arXiv preprint server
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Source: dailytechinfo.org, sci-dig.ru