antimatter
milhayser | December 27, 2013Coldness can manifest where you least expect it: on a planet rapidly warmed by the combustion of fossil fuel, or in the heart of a star 250 times as massive as our own. On Greg Laden's Blog, Greg explains that an apparent "recovery" of Arctic sea ice from its historic low in 2012 does not invalidate the long-term trend. Greg also explains this year's legacy of extreme weather, such as snow in Cairo, writing that when there is less difference in temperature between equatorial and polar regions, "the jet streams get all wiggly and cause northerly air to reach far to the south in some places and…
esiegel | November 29, 2013“If you see an antimatter version of yourself running towards you, think twice before embracing.” -J. Richard Gott III
It may not occur to you that it's a special thing that the Earth and everything found on it is made of matter; it seems intuitive that it couldn't be any other way. And yet, the very laws of nature themselves haven't yet told us why or how the Universe is this way! For this week's Ask Ethan (and leave your own questions or suggestions here), our regular reader Michael Fisher wants us to get at the heart of this, asking:
Is it true that in the early universe matter &…
esiegel | January 9, 2013"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." -Albert Einstein
It may be hard to believe, seeing as how it's been our leading theory of gravity for nearly a century now, but Einstein's General Relativity is possibly the most frequently challenged scientific idea of all-time. Of course, it's emerged victorious from each and every one of those challenges, making a slew of unintuitive predictions that have been spectacularly confirmed each time they've been tested.
Image credit: Miloslav Druckmuller (Brno U. of Tech.), Peter Aniol, and Vojtech Rusin.
This…
esiegel | November 16, 2012"Other than the laws of physics, rules have never really worked out for me." -Craig Ferguson
Earlier this week, evidence was presented measuring a very rare decay rate -- albeit not incredibly precisely -- which point towards the Standard Model being it as far as new particles accessible to colliders (such as the LHC) go. In other words, unless we get hit by a big physics surprise, the LHC will become renowned for having found the Higgs Boson and nothing else, meaning that there's no window into what lies beyond the Standard Model via traditional experimental particle physics.
Image credit:…
jeure | March 29, 2012Imagine looking in the mirror and finding your familiar face reflected back as you've always known it. But as you look more closely, as you precisely examine that mirror image, subtle distortions emerge. The glass itself remains flawless, but real and fundamental differences exist between you and the face that lives on the other side of the looking glass.
Something similar happens in the quantum world when matter is examined against its exotic reflection: antimatter. The analogy is admittedly fanciful, but it's no more dramatic than the dynamics of these almost-twins, which annihilate one…
esiegel | May 13, 2008There is a very techincal paper this morning by Martin Bojowald that asks the question, How Quantum Is The Big Bang? Let me break it down for you.
If you took a look at empty space and zoomed in on it, looking at spaces so small that they made a proton look like a basketball, you'd find that space wasn't so empty after all, but was filled with stuff like this:
What are these? They're little pairs of matter particles and anti-matter particles. They spontaneously get created, live for a brief fraction of a second, and then run into each other and disappear. That's what happens on very small…
esiegel | April 14, 2008Yesterday, my good friend (and SWAB reader) Brian wrote a great comment about the practical reasons to explore space, where he talked about the overall economic impact that Space Exploration has had on the economy, as well as the impact it has had on our knowledge and understanding of the Earth, its environment, and how to manage/mitigate the threats to it. And that's wonderful for exploring our Solar System and others.
But what do I do in the meantime? After all, this isn't what I study or explore. So I asked this:
The practical arguments as to why exploration of space is worthwhile…
esiegel | March 4, 2008I love The Straight Dope. For 35 years, people have written in and asked some of the most difficult-to-answer questions on any topic you can think of; the staffers, writing under the pseudonym Cecil Adams, do their best to get to the bottom of their questions. Well, they also have a message board, and I saw one of the most difficult questions I've ever seen there:
Where does all the matter in the universe come from?
I'm no[t an] astrophysicist but I understand a little about the Big Bang Theory and also that there's lots of stuff we don't know or probably ever will know about it.
But the…