Physicists Discover Particle Alternating Between Matter and Antimatter

Oxford Physicists Find Charm Mesons Switching Between Matter and Antimatter, Challenging Universe’s Origin Mystery

Scientists from the University of Oxford have established that subatomic particles called charm mesons created in a giant particle accelerator known as the Large Hadron Collider can swap between matter and antimatter states. This discovery others a fantastically small mass difference as small as 0. 0000…01 grams between these states, which can be perhaps the reason as to why the universe did not collapse after the Big Bang. The results indicate that charm mesons could be decaying into matter at a higher rate than antimatter giving crucial information about the ratios of matter and antimatter in the universe that question the generally accepted theories about its formation.

Physicists at Oxford have conducted a study of the data collected by LHC and have discovered that at least one subatomic particle can switch from matter to antimatter and back. This discovery suggests that a fraction of a gram difference in two types of particles could have saved the universe from vanishing soon after it was created.

In their basic property, antimatter is as everybody said, the mirror image of matter except in charge. Currently, if matter and its counterpart, the antimatter collide, the two substances are destroyed and turn to energy.

Some particles have their antiparticles as their counterparts such as the photons while other ones may exist in both a state of existence and non-existence because of the superposition quantum which was well illustrated by the Schrödinger’s cat paradox. This lets these particles shuttle between matter and antimatter They have discovered that particles found in these storms can flip between being matter and antimatter.

A new particle has now been added to this short list – the charm meson. Ordinarily, the charm meson is a particle formed out of a charm quark and an up antiquark while the antibaryon of the charm meson is a particle composed of an up quark and a charm antiquark. These states are always unique, but according to the recent studies charm mesons can interchange the states.

The discovery relies on a near negligible difference in terms of mass between the two states; precisely 0. 00000000000000000000000000000000000001 grams.

This level of measurement was from data which was gathered in the second run carried out by Oxford University physicists. Charm mesons are formed in the proton-proton collisions at the LHC and normally disintegrate into other particles after travelling only a few millimeters.

Next, looking at charm mesons decaying at different distances and analyzing the minuscule mass differences the scientists found that they are key in deciding if a charm meson will turn into an anti-charm meson or not.

This little finding could have vast implications for how we look at the universe we live in. The conventional view, base on the Standard Model theory of particle physic, the Big Bang explosion, should generate equal quantities of anti-matter and matter and thus cancelling each other, which should have left the universe empty. Since this didn’t occur, and matter came to dominate, the question arises: but what is necessary to do it, what caused this imbalance?

One potential explanation for the new finding is that more travels to matter from antimatter than in the reverse with particles such as charm meson. The reasons for this are not entirely clear and middle childhood seems to sit awkwardly between these two forms of knowledge acquisition At this point, for adults, it is useful to think about how this question might fit into the broader picture of development and even science In such a way, exploring whether this is so, and if that is indeed the case, why, might offer a clue to solving one of science’s biggest problems.

The study has been submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters, and is currently available on the preprint server arXiv.

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