Why Are We Made of Matter? 393
StartsWithABang (3485481) writes "The Universe began with equal amounts of matter and antimatter after the Big Bang, and yet when we look out at today's Universe, we find that, even on the largest scales, it's made of at least 99.999%+ matter and not antimatter. The problem of how we went from a matter-antimatter-symmetric Universe to the matter-dominated one we have today is known as baryogenesis, and is one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics. Where are we on the quest to understand it as of April, 2014? A wonderful and comprehensive recap is here."
Ah, antimatter (Score:5, Funny)
God hid it.
God is made of it.
Okay, that's the god excuses out of the way... now on with the physics!
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Because God left the cap off the Matter toothpaste.
Re:Ah, antimatter (Score:4, Funny)
Not quite. It's because god squeezed the tube from the middle rather than neatly from the bottom up, leaving a lot left in the tube. So much for omnipotence.
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I agree, that's exactly what she did.
Re:Ah, antimatter (Score:4, Funny)
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I think what's really going on is we actually are anti-matter, and what WE see as anti-matter is the real matter.
I base this, of course, on absolutely nothing.
Re:Ah, antimatter (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, the obligatory /. cheap shot at religion, always good for a cheap +5 funny. You failed to complete the cliche though, there should have been a slam aimed at the GOP in there somewhere.
Re:Ah, antimatter (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, if you insist: The GOP is using peoples' religion to encourage them to think of themselves as butthurt victims, creating divisiveness and the notion that in a nation where there's a church on every other streetcorner, religious people are somehow the oppressed, and they're doing it, not because they care about those religious beliefs or religious people, but in order to create a political climate where it's easier to redistribute wealth upwards.
Oops, I'm sorry. You specifically requested a cheap shot and that wasn't one. I'll do better next time.
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Sure they are, metaphorically speaking.
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Literalists that are metaphorically speaking...
I do not think those words mean what you think they mean.
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You need to practice parsing sentences. *I* am metaphorically speaking.
Re:Ah, antimatter (Score:5, Funny)
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"News for WIMPs, stuff that's matter."
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That brings to mind an idea: Maybe dark matter is antimatter, and the universe isn't as inscrutable as we think.
Re:Ah, antimatter (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. Antimatter is still basically "normal" matter, just with the opposite charge. We've created a fair bit of it in the lab, especially anti-hydrogen and various anti-subatomic particles The mass appears to be the same, and it interacts with light and other EM fields just as normal matter does. The only real difference is that when you bring a matter particle together with its antimatter twin they mutually annihilate.
Dark matter on the other hand would have to interact only via gravity, no electromagnetism to promote "clumping" into atoms or larger structures, nor any absorption or emission of light or we would be able to see evidence of its existence in the spectrum and brightness of distant stars.
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Quite right, and IIRC the assumption is that dark matter is *only* affected by gravity, none of the other forces. But where clumping is concerned the strong nuclear force doesn't actually do much - it's range just isn't long enough. I'm sure a *little* fusion occurs in the interstellar medium when two nuclei just happen to hit each other perfectly, but really it's effects are mostly confined to the hearts of stars, long after the clumping of matter has occurred. Dark matter on the other hand is presumed
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Well, a fair amount in scientific research terms anyway.
Your destructive yield estimate is way off though - a gram of annihilated antimatter would release about 3x the energy released by the Hiroshima bomb. You'd need several kilograms to match the destructive potential of the worlds current nuclear stockpile, which realistically isn't nearly enough to sterilize even the outer surface of the planet, much less cause serious structural damage to it.
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I think you've got the right idea, but you wrote it the wrong way around - fission bombs typically have a ~1% efficiency, not loss. So-called fusion bombs up that several times by having the secondary fusion reaction supply a *lot* more neutrons to stimulate greater usage of the fission fuel, but you still have well over 90% of the fuel remaining unfissioned. Which is why I specified the energy *released* by the Hiroshma bomb, the explosion would have been something like 20-100x larger if the fuel had bee
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Nope the simplest explanation is, it had to be either one or the other, complexity not altering the outcome. Take an coin toss a simple probability outcome, either heads or tails but the complexity of the event can be raised by many magnitudes of complexity and probability by not looking at whether the coin lands heads of tails, but at say how many calcium atoms will be scrapped from your thumb nail in the flipping action and be transferred to the surface where the coin lands. So both events occur simultan
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God hid it.
God is made of it.
Okay, that's the god excuses out of the way... now on with the physics!
Which is more scientific because ... look, strings! I mean, alternate universes! I mean ... squirrel!
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We know where he hid it. He hid it in yesterday. Anti-matter is matter going backwards in time [stackexchange.com]*, so when when the big bang happened, all antimatter disappeared into yesterday while we headed off towards tomorrow.
--
* For some definitions of time.
So what? (Score:3, Funny)
What does it matter that we're made of matter? Were we made of anti-matter, would it anti-matter to anyone? Don't lose any energy on this matter, because it doesn't fucking matter.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Funny)
There are 3 kinds of universes -
1. mostly matter
2. 50/50
3. mostly antimatter.
In type 1 universes everyone is asking "why is everything made of matter".
type 2 universes are empty.
type 3 universes electricty flows the right way.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Funny)
type 3 universes electricty flows the right way.
Unfortunately the name of the direction is wrong.
If anti-matter won ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So there are really only 2 scenarios.
Actually... (Score:5, Funny)
By mass, I'm currently ~70% water, ~29.5% matter, and 0.5% cookie dough
Disclaimer: Do not eat raw cookie dough made with unpasteurized eggs.
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Are you 0.5% cookie dough? [youtube.com]
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If you're not careful with those eggs, you'll quickly feel like only 65% water.
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Probably due to spin (Score:2)
The beginning probably had a spin one way or another that predisposed one type of matter VS the other.
The effect was probably small, but over the vast space and energies involved that small difference made a giant outcome.
Butterfly effect and all that.
This would be my completely uneducated guess. Physics persons can freely rip on me as an idiot lol Please when ripping on me, tell me something in terms an idiot would understand though, I do enjoy learning some things. Especially the why of things! :)
One of m
Re:Probably due to spin (Score:5, Interesting)
tell me something in terms an idiot would understand
Richard Feynman answered that question with something like:
"I can't explain it in terms that you would understand, because I can't understand it, in terms that you would understand."
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What if there is no reason? (Score:5, Interesting)
In spite of my better judgement I'm about to attempt an analogy, so bear with me here. The lowest number of moves to unscramble a maximally scrambled rubik's cube (a 3x3x3 one) is 20. That is, for every configuration of a rubik's cube, there is a sequence of 20 moves or less that will unscramble it. However, there is no algorithm to generate those solutions. They are unstructured; they're simply lists of moves. The algorithms used by human (and computer) rubik's cube solvers are far from move-optimal, but benefit from being executable by non-omniscient beings. They pick out some pattern that is applicable to the rubik's cube, and then direct you in manipulating it according to that pattern until it's solved.
The way science understands the world is by comparing new data to what we already know. For example, we know penicillin kills bacteria; if we discover a new disease, and then discover that it is caused by bacteria, we can safely draw the conclusion that we'll probably be able to treat it with penicillin. We've used science to discover a pattern in the world ('penicillin kills bacteria'), then use deduction to determine where it is and isn't applicable, and form new categories based on what happens when we encounter new data (like bacteria not killed by penicillin being classified as anti-biotic resistant). Science is basically a collection of patterns like this, and because they're patterns (structures, structured rules, whatever you want to call them) we can understand them.
Now, what I wonder about is this. What if the fact that we live in a matter universe now (rather than an anti-matter one) is like the set of move-optimal solutions to a rubik's cube? They both describe a certain state of affairs, but they also both completely lack (could lack) any kind of structure. And because they lack this structure, there is nothing for us to latch onto, nothing for us to understand, no pattern to detect. It is simply the case, and there is no further reason. There is no reason why there is no structure in the move-optimal solutions to a rubik's cube. There might not be a reason why there is a massive matter/anti-matter imbalance either.
This is something I've been trying to work out for a while, so please excuse me if my explanation is unclear. I just think it would be a really interesting possibility, something which isn't often discussed, maybe because it simply gets overlooked.
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I'm sure there is a reason though perhaps I'm just too wedded to cause and effect. Anyway, whether that mooted reason occured in this universe after the big bang , or the seeds were sown "outside" in the multiverse - if there is one - we don't yet know. If its the latter then we'll probably never know what it was - as you say , its just the way it is. If this universe is part of a multiverse or some other larger structure and isn't completely self contained then physics may find itself up against a brick wa
Re:What if there is no reason? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What if there is no reason? (Score:4, Informative)
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Why are you even conscious? Couldn't a machine exist like you that did the exact same things you'd do but wasn't conscious at all?
Note: I'm not talking about "free will". I'm talking about the subjective experience that I have (and I believe you have) of being aware. I don't think I'm the only conscious being in this universe.
To me the two amazing things are:
0) That there is anything at all in the first place.
1) That there is this consciousness phe
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The question isn't why matter instead of anti-matter, the question is how did it not end up as a homogeneous 50/50 self-annihilating mixture?
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No. The anthropic principle states that the universe is the way it is because if it had been different (not capable of generating life) we wouldn't have been in it to perceive it. My point is that there may be aspects of reality that we can't grasp in a theory because there is no underlying pattern to grasp. There would simply be a list of facts, nothing more.
Why Are We Made of Matter? (Score:2)
the question is not valid because (Score:2)
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easy! (Score:2)
because we are almost surely living in simulation. [simulation-argument.com] and in that simulation, things just have to be so for us to be simulated.
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Are the rules of this universe such that no matter what as long as you have certain processes, consciousness will arise as an emergent phenomenon? And what would those certain processes be?
Could it be extinguished and yet the person still continues on "living" and moving as before? For example say a person went to sle
State of your memory (Score:2)
Matter-Antimatter Explosions (Score:5, Interesting)
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I am not a physicist, but since light is a particle and a wave it would seem that light being matter would break down anti matter over time?
Like I said it's just what I would think and I could be insanely stupid and wrong lol
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I am not a physicist, but since light is a particle and a wave it would seem that light being matter would break down anti matter over time?
Like I said it's just what I would think and I could be insanely stupid and wrong lol
Nah, light isn't matter at all (a particle, yes, but not matter). More precisely: every particle has an equivalent antiparticle with exactly opposite charge (or other properties). For example, electrons are charged leptons with lepton number +1 and electric charge -1 (in units of electron-charge). The antielectron (positron) has lepton number -1, and electric charge +1. Conservation laws require that lepton number and charge be conserved, so the positron and electron can annihilate each other. The proton an
Re:Matter-Antimatter Explosions (Score:4, Informative)
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All of our current physics shows all matter ha
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I've long wondered the same thing, but for that to be true, the antimatter would have to be outside our observational universe; otherwise, we would detect the matter-antimatter collisions.
They are just over there. (Score:2)
Ther
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Just make sure to charge people to find out the "truth" take a page from l'ron hubbard.....
Why Are We Made of Matter? (Score:5, Funny)
Because we travel the way we do through time.
Antimatter travels through it in the other direction.
And we when we and the antimatter get all the way from one end of Time to the other--BOOM! It's the end.
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I'll have some of what he's having.
It tastes better (Score:2)
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Prove it (Score:4, Insightful)
Only two possible outcomes (Score:2)
There are only two possible outcomes:
- either matter and antimatter annihilate each other and the universe is mostly void
- either one eventually wins over the other, leaving majorly one in the universe and pockets of the other
Out of those two, one is clearly more likely to lead to intelligent life.
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Perhaps... (Score:2)
Personally I don't like this idea because I perceive time as an emergent phenomenon of the expansion and disturbance of space and as such is not a dimension.
Its more likely that the energy released by annihilation in the early universe reconstituted to form ordinary matter.
How do we know? (Score:2)
Because ... (Score:2)
... Bacon [gkworld.com] is made out of matter. Had the universe evolved without bacon, we wouldn't be here to discuss the issue.
left-handed and right-handed knots (Score:2)
in the studies that i've been doing for the past four months the best explanation i've encountered is one where particles are actually photons obeying maxwell's equations *to the absolute* letter, on some form of circular (or knotted, or hubius helical) path, where the epicentre creates a synchtronic electro-magnetic field that it in symbiotic support of the epicentre. there is actually a lot of research recently into optics which shows that it *is* actually possible to create phased laser beams that will
maybe there is an alternate universe (Score:2)
Black Holes... (Score:3)
Is there any difference between a Black Hole/Singularity formed from Matter vs. Antimatter?
Did galactic-sized magnetic fields push the antimatter into the supermassive black holes in their centers?
If you're looking for something missing of the cosmic scale, black holes seem like a good place to look; although I suppose it'll also be the last place you look...
Why go negative? (Score:2)
Of course it matters that we are made, and whatever we are made of quantum-wise, we should be proud, even if it destroys us when we come together.
I vote for calling it 'matter-of-fact'.
P.S. I appreciate StartsWithaBang renaming it from, "Why are we layered fatter?"
Dark matter? (Score:2)
Maybe it all just dropped through to the other side.
Matter is simply ..... (Score:2)
The Standard Model is obviously wrong (Score:3)
Re:Something From Nothing. (Score:5, Informative)
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Well....there is your problem....asking (pure) astronomy grads a question about physics is like asking a (pure) physics grads questions about math. Sure, they know the stuff they need to know to do their work but they can't answer the deeper "why" questions related to the field.
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Those weren't physics questions. Those were astronomy questions.
Division of labor (Score:2)
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You appear to be confusing "most people" with "thick people".
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Yes, many people don't see these distinctions. But it's quite worthwhile to understand things anyway.
it's actually a Defense of Darwin's ideas to avoid thinking he wrote "The Origin of THE Species" or something like that. He was out to explain, in modern terms, why we see life organized into somewhat fuzzy sets that change with time, and personally, I think the man did a pretty good job. Unfortunately, I'd estimate that 60 - 70% of the people who thinkthey believe in Evolution either think Evolution proceed
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Nobody in science actually claims it just popped up from nowhere. Best guesses range from "we don't know" to "we cannot ever know".
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Don't throw away a theory because you don't understand how it is started. The Big Bang Theory is simply stunning in it's ability to explain [wikipedia.org] almost everything in the know universe that we observe. It is up to someone else to work out what may have triggered it.
This is just like Evolution which bri
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Uh, where do YOU think it came from? If you say "God," then you have to explain why God can pop up from nowhere, or why he can be eternal, but nothing else can.
Actually they don't have to explain it. That's why it's called faith.
I'm not a particularly religious sort, more agnostic than anything, and faith doesn't really enter into my daily life. That said, there's plenty of things about the universe we just can't explain, so I would think there's room left for faith if that's what a particular person finds to be fulfilling. It doesn't do much for me, but to each their own, and I certainly don't derive a sense of smug superiority from mocking the religious peop
Umm , thats unlikely to happen (Score:2)
Unlike the energy from nuclear fission or fusion which we essentially get for free because its already in a sense locked up in the atoms, for an anti matter bomb you'd first have to make the antimatter - from scratch. And the amount of energy you'd have to put in to do that would have to be at least equal to the amount of energy you'd get out. So to create an anti matter bomb to physically destroy a planet (rather than just laying waste to the surface) you'd have to put in enough energy to do that in the fi
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Since we cannot detect signals from other civilizations, it means that this period does not last long. Perhaps, we are also close to the bottleneck.
Just devastation of planet's surface does not stop radio transmissions. Radio is simple and robust technology. It should be something else.
Certainly, it could be that humanity is unique in the Universe, and the Civilizations' Bottleneck theory is not valid.
Still the Universe's Great Sile
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If you used coal or nuclear energy to create all that anti-matter it would cause a great deal of pollution. Personally, I think we should go green and use solar energy powered death rays.
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No. The amount you put in would be at least half of what you'd get out. An antimatter bomb gets half its boom from the matter it combines with, which requires no energy to manufacture....
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But, IIRC, matter and anti-matter particles can only be created in balanced pairs. You may only capture the antimatter, but you still had to create the corresponding amount of matter as a side effect.
Re:civilizations' bottleneck (Score:5, Insightful)
As soon as physicists solve the problem of antimatter the antimatter bomb will be created.
It will be the size of a coin and could literally destroy literally a quoter of a planet. This is how civilizations end in the Universe.
You vastly overstate the yield of an antimatter weapon.
antimatter weapon yield calculator [edwardmuller.com]
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And that is why we do not hear any intelligent radio transmissions from other star systems.
But does it explain why there's apparently no intelligent postings on Slashdot?
There were originally equal amounts of facts and anti-facts. Computer Scientists are still trying to explain why anti-facts now make up 99.999% of the postings.
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I think the edge of the universe is just unrealized potential, or grasping at straws another way... lol
I always think of the edge of the expansion like Schrodinger cat, it neither exists or doesn't exist until you go there, then it exists and would be part of normal space.
P.S. I am not a physics expert by any means.
Re:easy (Score:5, Informative)
Why do people think these simple questions are hard???
I agree. It's almost as if they don't read past the headline.
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Theorizing the state of things before the big bang is for philosophers. Besides, if there was matter in the space our universe occupies before the big bang, it wouldn't have survived intact through the first few milliseconds due to the incredibly high energy density, not to mention surviving whatever process caused the big bang in the first place.
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I believe it was a hypothesis that the universe began with symmetric amounts of matter and anti-matter. The recent BICEP2 results should provide a method for us to inquire about that idea either directly or through constraints by tossing out many hypothesizes related to quantum gravity and the nature of the early universe.
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The way I have understood what's been said so far is this. The universe started with equal amounts matter and antimatter. Matter and anti-matter can only be produced and annihilated in equal amounts. Today we have reached a state, where there is much more matter than antimatter.
This is obviously inconsistent. So one of those three statements has to be wrong. I for one don't know which one of them is wrong. And I also haven't come across a physicist who had solid evide
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If we were made of anti-matter, we would see matter as anti-matter and the anti-matter that we are made of as matter.
...and Spock would have a Van Dyke and (gasp) Sulu would be hitting on Uhura.