Thursday 24 November 2011

LHC antimatter anomaly hints at new physics

LHC antimatter anomaly hints at new physics - physics-math - 23 November 2011 - New Scientist
"The Large Hadron Collider has turned up differences in how particles of matter and antimatter decay that the reigning standard model of physics may not be able to explain
WE ARE here thanks to a curious imbalance in the universe. To the best of our knowledge, the universe began with equal, or nearly equal, amounts of matter and antimatter. Because these particles annihilate on contact, they should have destroyed each other long ago in a blaze of radiation, leaving little if anything behind to form stars, planets and people. Clearly, that didn't happen.
The hunt for the special something that might have skewed the universe in favour of matter occupies the best minds in physics. Compelling signs of such lopsided physics have emerged at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva in Switzerland. It is the first sign of new physics at the LHC and could provide a boost for the theory of supersymmetry, which adds a zoo of new particles to the ones we already know. "We are getting excited," says Yuval Grossman of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York."

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