[HN Gopher] ALICE finds first ever evidence of the antimatter pa...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       ALICE finds first ever evidence of the antimatter partner of
       hyperhelium-4
        
       Author : elashri
       Score  : 272 points
       Date   : 2024-12-09 19:01 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (home.cern)
 (TXT) w3m dump (home.cern)
        
       | isoprophlex wrote:
       | Wow, fascinating. I had no idea these hypernuclei even existed!
       | 
       | Interesting background read:
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypernucleus
        
         | 3form wrote:
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_atom this is also a
         | supplementary fun read. I find it interesting that you could
         | come up with many such combinations, and then answer to "could
         | it exist?" becomes "why, yes!" more often than I would expect.
        
           | andreareina wrote:
           | Everything not forbidden is compulsory.
           | 
           | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarian_principle
        
         | amai wrote:
         | Unfortunately the lifetime of these hypernuclei is of the order
         | of picoseconds. They will not revolutionize material sciences.
        
           | automatic6131 wrote:
           | Material sciences are generally electromagnetic effects only.
           | I'd be surprised when nuclear changes alters chemistry or
           | engineering in any way that has significance outside of
           | nuclear reactors.
           | 
           | Well, I suppose, radioactive decay is of negative use in
           | chemistry and engineering.
        
             | indoordin0saur wrote:
             | One interesting counterexample to this is deuterium and
             | water made from it. It is 11% denser than normal water, ice
             | made from it sinks in normal water, it has a higher heat
             | capacity, is more viscous and has a higher boiling point.
             | It's also completely stable!
        
               | ndsipa_pomu wrote:
               | You can also drink it, though not a good idea to have
               | more than a few sips due to the extra weight and
               | different reactivity. You might feel dizzy if you drank a
               | few glasses worth and it replaced the ordinary water in
               | your inner ear.
               | 
               | Also, heavy water is typically slightly radioactive due
               | to it usually containing tritiated water (T2O), though
               | regular water can also contain that.
               | 
               | Apparently, swapping 20% of your cells' water with heavy
               | water is survivable, but if you try this, don't blame me
               | if you go sterile (cell mitosis will likely be affected).
        
               | amai wrote:
               | Of course you can find videos of people on YouTube who
               | drink deuterium:
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcO1yCAO-pI
        
               | automatic6131 wrote:
               | Wow that's pretty interesting. I'm least surprised that
               | deuterated chemistry is what's first mentioned, and I'm
               | sure that there are some other good stuff in the
               | category. I bet heavy gasoline (lol) has a lower octane
               | number, for example.
        
       | westurner wrote:
       | Does this actually prove that antimatter necessarily exists?
       | 
       | Does this prove that antimatter is necessary for theories of
       | gravity to concur with other observations?
       | 
       | Do the observed properties of antimatter particles correspond
       | with antimatter as the or a necessary nonuniform correction
       | factor to theories of gravity?
        
         | pvg wrote:
         | Antimatter detection is not the new thing here, being nearly a
         | century old:
         | 
         | https://timeline.web.cern.ch/carl-anderson-discovers-positro...
        
         | OscarCunningham wrote:
         | You're confusing antimatter with dark matter.
        
           | nsxwolf wrote:
           | With a splash of antimass in that confusion too
        
             | westurner wrote:
             | My mistake, my mistake.
             | 
             | It seems I had my Antimatter confused with mah Dark matter.
             | 
             | Antimatter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter
             | 
             | Dark matter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter
             | 
             | Antimass:
             | 
             | I and the Internet have never heard of antimass.
             | 
             | Negative mass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_mass
             | 
             | Dark energy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy
             | 
             | Dark fluid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_fluid :
             | 
             | > _Dark fluid goes beyond dark matter and dark energy in
             | that it predicts a continuous range of attractive and
             | repulsive qualities under various matter density cases.
             | Indeed, special cases of various other gravitational
             | theories are reproduced by dark fluid, e.g. inflation,
             | quintessence, k-essence, f(R), Generalized Einstein-Aether
             | f(K), MOND, TeVeS, BSTV, etc. Dark fluid theory also
             | suggests new models, such as a certain f(K+R) model that
             | suggests interesting corrections to MOND that depend on
             | redshift and density_
        
               | nsxwolf wrote:
               | Negative mass was what I was going for with "antimass".
               | For some reason I thought that was a common term but I
               | guess it is not.
        
               | westurner wrote:
               | Not sure why I confused the terms.
               | 
               | FWIU this Superfluid Quantum Gravity rejects dark matter
               | and/or negative mass in favor of supervaucuous
               | supervacuum, but I don't think it attempts to predict
               | other phases and interactions like Dark fluid theory?
               | 
               | From "Show HN: Physically accurate black hole simulation
               | using your iPhone camera"
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42191692 :
               | 
               | > _Ctrl-F Fedi , Bernoulli, Gross-Pitaevskii:_
               | 
               | >> _" Gravity as a fluid dynamic phenomenon in a
               | superfluid quantum space. Fluid quantum gravity and
               | relativity." (2015) https://hal.science/hal-01248015/ _
               | 
               | There's a newer paper on it.
               | 
               | Alternatives to general relativity > Testing of
               | alternatives to general relativity: https://en.wikipedia.
               | org/wiki/Alternatives_to_general_relati...
               | 
               | The new Sagittarius* black hole image with phase might
               | help with discarding models unsupported by evidence. Are
               | those knots or braids or fields around a vortical
               | superfluidic attractor system? There doesn't at all
               | appear to be a hard boundary Schwarzschild radius.
               | 
               | But that's about not dark matter not antimatter.
        
         | ranger207 wrote:
         | Antimatter has been used in medical PET (positron emission
         | tomography) scans since the 60s
        
         | dragonwriter wrote:
         | > Does this actually prove that antimatter necessarily exists?
         | 
         | Antimatter definitely exists, it is detectable, and used; e.g,
         | PET scans use positrons (anti-electrons), and there have been
         | experiments (only in animal models last I knew) with anti-
         | proton radiotherapy for cancers.
         | 
         | This is the first evidence of a _particular configuration of
         | antimatter_ , not the first evidence of _antimatter_.
        
           | benbayard wrote:
           | To be more specific this is the first time we have detected
           | hyper-antimatter of Helium where one of the quarks in the
           | nucleus is an anti-strange quark (an anti-lambda from the
           | article)
        
             | westurner wrote:
             | Thank you all for corrections and clarifications.
             | 
             | I had confused Antimatter in particle theory (where there
             | is no gravity) and Dark matter, which has no explanation in
             | particle theory and maybe probably shouldn't be necessary
             | for a unified model that describes n-body gravity at
             | astrophysical and particle scales.
        
               | westurner wrote:
               | > [dark matter] _has no explanation in particle theory_
               | 
               | From
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42369294#42371561 :
               | 
               | > _One theory of dark matter is that it 's strange quark
               | antimatter._
        
         | gus_massa wrote:
         | My guess is that you are confusing " _antimatter_ " and " _dark
         | matter_ ".
         | 
         | If you want some antimmater, you can go to your nearby physics
         | suply store and buy some radioactive material that produce
         | positrons. It's quite easy. (Radioactive material may be
         | dangerous. Don't fool with that!) If you want antiprotons or
         | antihydrogen, you need a huge particle acelerator. They make
         | plenty of antiprotons in the CERN, to make colisions. They are
         | very difficult to store, so they survive a very short time on
         | Earth.
         | 
         | Dark matter is very different. We have some experimental resuls
         | that don't match the current physics theories. The current best
         | guess is that there is some matter that we can't see for some
         | reason. Nobody is sure what it is. Perhaps it's made of very
         | dark big objects or perhaps it's made of tiny particles that
         | don't interact with light. (I'm not sure the current favorite
         | version in the area.) Anyway, some people don't like " _dark
         | matter_ " and prefer to change the theories, but the proposed
         | new theories also don't match the experimental results.
        
           | orwin wrote:
           | > Anyway, some people don't like "dark matter" and prefer to
           | change the theories
           | 
           | It seems a bit more complicated than that, mostly because the
           | vulgarization often available too is quite bad to explain the
           | issue.
           | 
           | My understanding:
           | 
           | - Our current theories fail to predict/match an array of
           | observations, as if more matter than what we can detect
           | exist. Some scientists called that the "dark matter problem",
           | that's what most physicists working on the subject refer to
           | when they talk about "dark matter".
           | 
           | - Every theory you talked about: dark matter big objects,
           | dark matter particles AND the "change the theories" (i guess
           | you talk about the Modified Newtonian dynamics, where you
           | alter Newton's second law at low speed to match some
           | observations) are dark matter theories: theories that tries
           | to explain why the universe act as it is, not matching our
           | current theories, either by adding new things, or by
           | modifying our discovered laws to match our observations. Each
           | of those theories have multiple branch investigated.
           | 
           | - the "dark matter particle theory" is sometime vulgarized as
           | "dark matter" on podcasts or in books/articles. This is
           | because more scientists work on particle physics than on
           | gravity or astrophysics (my country present like 3
           | astrophysics thesis each year, and dozens of particle physics
           | thesis). I think this caused a huge misunderstanding.
           | 
           | - Some people with a common understanding (like mine, i meant
           | non-physicists, it's absolutely not derogatory) like MOND
           | because philosophically it is quite nice, and also tend to
           | draw in people with minority/anti-etablishment habitus[0]
           | (cf: most physicists working on those subjects are particle
           | physicists). I'm not saying this theory is worse than the
           | others at all, i'm just saying that the kind of layperson
           | drawn to it can be _really_ sure they're right and profess
           | their beliefs everywhere, and sometime claim that "MOND isn't
           | dark matter", when they really confuse dark matter as a
           | problem to be solved with "dark matter particle theory".
           | Misunderstanding happen to everyone btw, it's really not a
           | big issue.
           | 
           | In case you did not talk about MOND but about theories that
           | claim that the issue are with our tools to observe at a
           | distance, some theories include that to explain some of the
           | inconsistencies, never all of them, and those theories seems
           | to really be a minority atm, so hopefull it wasn't about
           | that.
           | 
           | [0] Also, those habitus seems to draw in grifters who know
           | they can make quick bucks by selling books/conferences if
           | they look convincing enough, which is why MOND has a weird
           | reputation now, but absolutely serious physicists and
           | mathematicians work on the subject very, very seriously.
        
             | kuschku wrote:
             | > like MOND because philosophically it is quite nice, and
             | also tend to draw in people with minority/anti-etablishment
             | habitus
             | 
             | MOND is a non-relativistic theory. It's not even able to
             | explain the orbit of mercury, gravitational lensing or
             | black holes.
             | 
             | It's the equivalent of hot gluing jet engines to a roman
             | quadriga, it won't fly.
        
               | ars wrote:
               | > MOND is a non-relativistic theory.
               | 
               | Well obviously, it's literally in the name.
               | 
               | A relativistic version of the theory is: https://en.wikip
               | edia.org/wiki/Tensor%E2%80%93vector%E2%80%93...
        
               | GuB-42 wrote:
               | Not really a problem, relativistic effects are negligible
               | at the very low accelerations MOND is about. Should MOND
               | work with galaxies, a theory that say "if the force is
               | less than a threshold, use MOND, otherwise, use general
               | relativity" is not pretty, but good enough to match the
               | observations, and that's the important part.
               | 
               | There are more elegant ways of doing it (ex: TeVeS), but
               | before looking at the best way to reconcile general
               | relativity and MOND, something we know is possible, it is
               | important to make sure that MOND works at the scales it
               | is supposed to work with. Currently, it doesn't, but dark
               | matter doesn't either. More research is needed, as they
               | say.
        
               | kuschku wrote:
               | Disclaimer: Personal Opinion:
               | 
               | Personally, I don't think MOND will be the solution. But
               | I don't think it's going to be dark matter either.
               | 
               | 1. We don't have a a way to unify relativity and quantum
               | mechanics yet 2. Dark matter and MOND effects show up at
               | extremely low accelerations.
               | 
               | I have a hunch it's going to need a theory of quantum
               | gravity to properly solve this.
               | 
               | A century ago, quantum mechanics was initially formalized
               | to explain the uktraviolet catastrophe of blackbody
               | emissions.
               | 
               | The difference between the classical emissions curve and
               | the quantum based emissions curbe is very similar to the
               | correction factor applied by MOND. I don't think that's a
               | coincidence.
        
               | orwin wrote:
               | I never said it was correct, but people smarter than me
               | work on this and I do not have the scientific baggage to
               | say they're wrong.
               | 
               | To me they are as right as people working on lambdaCDM or
               | dark fluid, as long as none of those theory is able to
               | predict anything.
        
             | wbl wrote:
             | How is MOND nice? It has a totally unprincipled function
             | appearing that gets adjusted to fit.
        
               | orwin wrote:
               | It plays a nice song to the 'einstein/newton was wrong'
               | crowd, and it is philosophically interesting to think
               | that our observations validating Newton second law were
               | (at the time) only made on earth.
               | 
               | And some MOND derivatives are interesting, TeVeS is
               | mathematically nice. I'm pretty sure most people working
               | on those do it for the math more than to be correct tbh,
               | but people way more competent than me work on this
               | subject and I would not dare claim knowing they're wrong
               | or lying.
        
             | gus_massa wrote:
             | MOND isn't dark matter.
             | 
             | The idea of dark matter is that the problem is caused by
             | matter we can't see. We assume the standard equations and
             | from the rotation of the galaxies we have some missing
             | mass. But we have a few equations, like gravitational lens,
             | where we also can meassure missing mass and we can compare
             | the results of the different methods. There are a few
             | examples in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Newtonia
             | n_dynamics#Ou...
             | 
             | MOND is an alternative solution to the same problem.
             | 
             | I expect that most people working in dark matter are
             | astronomers an cosmologist. I don't expect many particle
             | phycicist realy care about dark matter. I've seen a lot of
             | claim of particle phycicist that their new pet theory may
             | be the dark matter, but it's mostly overhype to try to get
             | more grant money.
        
               | orwin wrote:
               | MOND is a theory that try to explain the 'dark matter
               | problem' we have with our current theories. It is in that
               | sense a dark matter theory, one that doesn't use matter
               | as an explanation, like entropic gravity, negative mass
               | or f(R) gravity.
               | 
               | And dark matter is an area of research and experiment in
               | particle physics (at least it was 10 years ago)
        
           | pfdietz wrote:
           | One theory of dark matter is that it's strange quark
           | antimatter. An asymmetry in the behavior of quarks and
           | antiquarks in the very early universe would have led to
           | antiquarks being preferentially squirreled away in tiny
           | ultradense nuggets of quark matter. While explaining dark
           | matter, this would also explain the observed matter-
           | antimatter asymmetry. Or, rather, it would explain it by
           | saying matter and antimatter are present in equal amounts,
           | but the antimatter is in a different form.
           | 
           | If this theory were true, tiny nuggets of this antimatter
           | would be passing through the solar system all the time.
           | Perhaps a future society could detect them and somehow trap
           | some for use as an energy source.
        
             | lazide wrote:
             | For that to be true at the scale required to 'balance the
             | scales', we'd have constant annihilation events - which
             | would be impossible to miss.
        
               | pfdietz wrote:
               | Not true: the surface area of the nuggets could be so
               | small they'd fall below detection threshold.
        
               | lazide wrote:
               | Any interaction with normal matter (including solar wind
               | or the interstellar medium) would result in extremely
               | energetic annihilation events. these aren't subtle.
        
               | pfdietz wrote:
               | And if the nuggets have sufficiently small surface area
               | then the rate of these events would be low enough to be
               | obscured by the background from other processes. It would
               | not be like the annihilation from antihydrogen atoms
               | hitting hydrogen atoms. The density of nuclear matter is
               | some 15 orders of magnitude higher than ordinary matter,
               | so nuggets 1 angstrom in diameter could have 10^15 times
               | the mass for a given upper bound on the interaction rate
               | with ambient gas.
        
               | lazide wrote:
               | There is no way anyone would miss the radiation emitted
               | though. It would be, at a minimum, a very perceptible
               | 'glow' over the volumes of space we're talking about.
        
               | pfdietz wrote:
               | It's not ruled out by evidence, AFAIK, and could explain
               | some observational puzzles.
               | 
               | https://indico.fnal.gov/event/6199/contributions/94686/at
               | tac...
               | 
               | (that was 2013; perhaps observations since have made it
               | less likely)
               | 
               | 2021 paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.08719
               | 
               | 2020 paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/3425
               | 73954_Antimatte... ("a large region of the parameter
               | space remains unconstrained, most notably for nuclear-
               | dense objects.")
        
           | ben_w wrote:
           | > The current best guess is that there is some matter that we
           | can't see for some reason. Nobody is sure what it is.
           | 
           | My pet conjecture (it's not detailed enough to be a
           | hypothesis) is that this is related to the baryon asymmetry
           | problem.
           | 
           | The antimatter symmetry problem is more than just baryons,
           | despite the name, as we also have more electrons than
           | positrons, not just more protons/neutrons than anti-
           | protons/anti-neutrons.
           | 
           | There's a few possibilities:
           | 
           | 1) the initial value just wasn't zero (an idea I heard from
           | Sabine Hossenfelder)
           | 
           | 2) the baryon number is violated in a process that requires
           | conservation of charge
           | 
           | This would suggest antiprotons or antineutrons do something
           | which involves the positron at the same time, so perhaps the
           | anti-neutron is weirdly stable or something -- neutron decay
           | is a weak force process, and that can slightly violate the
           | charge conjugation parity symmetry, so this isn't a
           | completely arbitrary conjecture.
           | 
           | If we've got lots of (for example) surprise-stable anti-
           | neutrons all over the place... it's probably not a perfect
           | solution to the missing mass, but it's the right kind of
           | magnitude to be something interesting to look at more
           | closely.
           | 
           | 3) the baryon number (proton/neutron/etc.) and/or lepton
           | number (electron/positron/muon/etc.) is violated in a process
           | that _does not_ require conservation of charge.
           | 
           | If you have some combination of processes which don't each
           | conserve charge, you're likely to get some net charge to the
           | universe (unless the antiproton process just happens to occur
           | at the same rate as the positron process); in quantum
           | mechanics I understand such a thing is genuinely meaningless,
           | while in GR this would contribute to the stress energy tensor
           | in a way that looks kinda like dark energy.
           | 
           | But like I said, conjecture. I'm not skilled enough to turn
           | this into a measurable hypothesis.
        
             | westurner wrote:
             | What about virtual particles, too?
             | 
             | Virtual particles:
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle :
             | 
             | > _As a consequence of quantum mechanical uncertainty,_ any
             | object or process that exists for a limited time or in a
             | limited volume cannot have a precisely defined energy or
             | momentum. _For this reason, virtual particles - which exist
             | only temporarily as they are exchanged between ordinary
             | particles - do not typically obey the mass-shell relation;
             | the longer a virtual particle exists, the more the energy
             | and momentum approach the mass-shell relation._
        
               | ben_w wrote:
               | Virtual particles are the generalisation to all quantum
               | fields of what near-field is in radio to just photons.
               | It's where you don't really benefit much from even
               | calling things "particles" in the first place, because
               | the wave function itself is a much better description.
               | 
               | Unfortunately the maths of QM doesn't play nice with the
               | maths of GR, which is also why zero-point effects are
               | either renormalised to exactly zero or otherwise predict
               | an effect 10^122 times larger than observed.
        
             | gus_massa wrote:
             | Even if antineutrons were stable, mixed with normal matter
             | they will colide with protons and release a poiton and a
             | lot of energy. (And the positron annihilate with an
             | electon.)
             | 
             | Anyway, I think there is still a chance that dark matter is
             | antineutrinos. I'm not sure if it has been ruled out.
        
               | wbl wrote:
               | I think cosmological limits plus the neutrino
               | observatories put some tight bounds on that.
        
           | ConceptJunkie wrote:
           | > If you want some antimmater, you can go to your nearby
           | physics suply store and buy some radioactive material that
           | produce positrons
           | 
           | Or buy some bananas. You'll get a positron every once in a
           | while from the occasional Potassium-40 decay.
        
             | gus_massa wrote:
             | I had to look up. Most of the radioctive potassium 40 in
             | bananas decay by electron emmision. A tiny part by positron
             | emision 0.001%. So you will get a lot of noise in the
             | radioacivity detector.
             | 
             | A few sources like
             | https://alpha.web.cern.ch/science/positron-source and
             | https://ifj.edu.pl/private/jdryzek/page_r12.html recomend
             | sodium 22.
        
       | nsxwolf wrote:
       | What is "hyperhelium"? Google only turns up things related to
       | this article.
        
         | Jabbles wrote:
         | 2nd paragraph of TFA
        
           | godelski wrote:
           | For those that can't RTFA, here's the first sentence of the
           | second paragraph                 > Hypernuclei are exotic
           | nuclei formed by a mix of protons, neutrons and hyperons, the
           | latter being unstable particles containing one or more quarks
           | of the strange type.
        
         | elashri wrote:
         | It is an exotic nucleus composed of two protons, one neutron,
         | and one lambda particle (which is a type of hyperon -fermions
         | with three quarks- containing a strange quark). This
         | configuration distinguishes it from regular helium-4, which
         | consists solely of protons and neutrons. The inclusion of a
         | lambda particle introduces "strangeness" into the nucleus,
         | making it a hypernucleus [1].
         | 
         | PS: By exotic here it I use the term as used by particle
         | physicists which just mean not your ordinary stuff discussed in
         | the "popular" working groups. Not the linguistic meaning of the
         | word exotic.
         | 
         | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypernucleus
        
           | bilsbie wrote:
           | What are the properties of this? Any cool applications?
        
             | mrguyorama wrote:
             | It decays in under a nanosecond. A reality of all exotic
             | matter research is that it is exotic almost always because
             | it cannot exist in a stable manner for longer than a
             | second.
             | 
             | The vast majority of applications, if any, will be
             | extremely niche sensing applications. They are useful to
             | further probe the edges of our knowledge of physics and
             | look at the corner cases where our models give confused
             | shrugs and odd answers.
             | 
             | It's not going to power a warp drive.
        
               | pfdietz wrote:
               | There has been an idea that quark matter with roughly
               | equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks could be
               | absolutely stable, the ground state of nuclear matter.
               | Ordinary charged nuclear matter would be inhibited from
               | converting to it (or being absorbed into it) by a strong
               | potential barrier at its surface. However, if this were
               | true neutron stars would actually be quark stars. There
               | is some evidence that this isn't so, so the theory is not
               | held to be very likely these days.
        
             | cogman10 wrote:
             | LHC likely created these particles which means we have
             | single atoms that have been created and not full compounds.
             | 
             | Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but the significance
             | of this is mostly just further confirmation of the
             | predictions of the standard model. The standard model says
             | such particles should exist and now that we've created
             | them, we've confirmed that they do indeed exist.
             | 
             | I don't think there's much practical application beyond
             | further refinement of theoretical physics and ruling out
             | other candidate theories.
        
           | ninalanyon wrote:
           | Exotic is defined in the Cambridge Dictionary as:
           | 
           | "unusual and exciting because of coming (or seeming to come)
           | from far away, especially a tropical country"
           | 
           | That doesn't seem too far from the use of it in physics. The
           | "tropical country" part is clearly optional but could be
           | replaced by "especially a special group of scientists".
        
             | brian-armstrong wrote:
             | Perhaps searches for exotic matter should take place in
             | tropical regions?
        
               | jagged-chisel wrote:
               | Now here is a science recruiting tool
        
       | dhosek wrote:
       | I've always wondered whether the "missing" antimatter in the
       | universe is simply too far away to see, past the light horizon.
       | 
       | And then there's the exotic theory that at the big bang, regular
       | matter went one direction in time and antimatter the opposite
       | direction.
        
         | spullara wrote:
         | they certainly can't hang out together for very long :)
        
           | BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
           | But when they do get together, it's a blast!
        
             | ykonstant wrote:
             | In the case of the CMB, a blast from the past.
        
         | short_sells_poo wrote:
         | The issue with the "past the observable universe horizon" is
         | that it is an entirely untestable theory. It may be true, but
         | it may as well be irrelevant because according to our
         | understanding of the universe, we are never going to be
         | affected by this fact (since it's in a part of the universe
         | from which information may never reach us).
        
           | kadoban wrote:
           | It also answers not much, just changes the question. There's
           | no known reason for all the matter to be over here, where we
           | are, and all of the antimatter to be way over _there_ outside
           | of the observable universe. If anything that seems much less
           | likely than there just being other imbalances in which gets
           | created (or which survives over time, etc.). The universe
           | would have to have preferred absolute directions in which to
           | throw different types of matter/antimatter? That'd be very
           | strange indeed, based on what we know.
        
             | dhosek wrote:
             | Not necessarily--perhaps it's something like what we have
             | right now is the residue of a slight variation from 50/50
             | in our local part of the universe (so it might have been
             | 50.01% matter, 49.99% antimatter, and after the bulk of the
             | matter and antimatter interacted and destroyed each other,
             | the observable universe is that .02% left over. Do we know
             | enough to be able to search for evidence of this in the
             | cosmic background radiation?
        
               | kadoban wrote:
               | My guesses are:
               | 
               | A universe that did that would have too much energy (from
               | the mutual annihilation) once the orders and orders of
               | magnitude of "extra" matter/antimatter interacted to make
               | that likely/possible.
               | 
               | Wouldn't we also see clouds of antimatter just hanging
               | around? What proportion of matter has ever interacted
               | with anything else? My guess is "low".
        
             | vl wrote:
             | >There's no known reason for all the matter to be over here
             | 
             | The problem is there is no known reason for universe to
             | exist. As such it could have been created in any
             | configuration possible - including one where we observe
             | matter, but antimatter is beyond event horizon.
        
           | Dalewyn wrote:
           | >we are never going to be affected by this fact (since it's
           | in a part of the universe from which information may never
           | reach us).
           | 
           | For curiosity's sake: Wouldn't something like quantum
           | mechanics defy that argument?
        
             | semi-extrinsic wrote:
             | Nope, see for instance good explanations in [1] and [2].
             | 
             | The TL;DR is that you can't actually get information out of
             | a measurement of entangled quantum states placed at
             | locations A and B without also transmitting classical
             | information between A and B.
             | 
             | But good question!
             | 
             | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation
             | 
             | [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/01/02
             | /no-w...
        
         | ben_w wrote:
         | > I've always wondered whether the "missing" antimatter in the
         | universe is simply too far away to see, past the light horizon.
         | 
         | I wondered the same thing, but it doesn't work out. Rolling
         | enough dice to get _enough_ of the antimatter far enough away
         | -- by a combination of Heisenberg for most of it and local
         | annihilation of what was left -- is just _too_ unlikely, given
         | what we see. Boltzmann-brain levels of unlikely.
        
           | dhosek wrote:
           | TIL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain
        
       | floxy wrote:
       | OT, but does anyone have updates on potential for antihelium
       | detection on the AMS aboard the ISS? Seems like they have a
       | handful of detections, but aren't quite statistically good enough
       | to be conclusive?
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Magnetic_Spectrometer
        
       | cryptozeus wrote:
       | Wow TIL two cool facts for antimatter use.
       | 
       | Exploring the Universe's Origins: The Big Bang should have
       | created equal amounts of matter and antimatter, yet our universe
       | is predominantly matter. Studying antimatter helps scientists
       | investigate this imbalance, shedding light on the fundamental
       | laws of physics.
       | 
       | Medical Applications: Antimatter plays a role in medical imaging
       | techniques like Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans, which
       | are used to detect conditions such as cancer.
        
         | naveen99 wrote:
         | It doesn't really help with the origin. If the universe is
         | infinite, any possibility will happen in some part of the
         | universe but not necessarily in the part accessible / visible
         | to us. So our part of the universe could have antimatter or a
         | different part could...
        
           | K0balt wrote:
           | So, are you saying that it might be possible that there are
           | antigalaxies somewhere out there beyond the visible horizon
           | in spacetime ? I mean, of course "possible" like flying
           | elephants possible, but maybe theoretically predictable?
           | 
           | Like maybe the matter went this way, and the antimatter went
           | that way in spacetime? Or maybe all the antimatter went
           | before the Big Bang and the matter went after?
           | 
           | I mean that's wild but it would fix the symmetry problem!
        
             | Cthulhu_ wrote:
             | I'm an amateur at best but I've only recently realised the
             | implications of the _observable_ universe, that is, we only
             | know of the existence  / size of the universe in what we
             | can see, and there may be (and correct me if I'm wrong) way
             | more Stuff beyond this 'boundary' whose light hasn't / will
             | never reach us.
        
               | robotworgen1994 wrote:
               | My understanding is for the geometry of our observable
               | universe to make sense, our actual entire universe must
               | be substantially larger to account for the mass needed to
               | make it so.
        
               | K0balt wrote:
               | So, what I'm hearing is that between us 3 amateurs, we
               | should write an ebook on antimatter asymmetry and sell it
               | on a website with healing crystals and magnetic
               | antimatter bracelets? I can publish the paper, when do we
               | start?
        
           | marcyb5st wrote:
           | While this might be possible, we would see annihilation
           | events at the boundaries of matter/anti-matter zones.
           | 
           | Additionally, statistically speaking, such a degree of order
           | is highly unlikely since it would have much lower entropy
           | compared to an homogeneous mix.
           | 
           | It is much more likely that there is some unknown physical
           | process that broke the symmetry between matter and anti-
           | matter and so our universe is matter rich and anti-matter
           | poor.
        
       | amai wrote:
       | ,,Using a machine-learning technique that outperforms
       | conventional hypernuclei search techniques, the ALICE researchers
       | looked at the data for signals of hyperhydrogen-4, hyperhelium-4
       | and their antimatter partners."
       | 
       | Which ML technique are they using? Could it be XGBoost, because I
       | heard CERN is using it?
        
         | amai wrote:
         | I found the link to the publication:
         | 
         | https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.17769
         | 
         | And in fact, they used XGBoost.
        
       | znpy wrote:
       | Reminded me of this weird but cool song: Large Hadron Rap -
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM :)
       | 
       | Oh god I just noticed it's from 16 years ago... I'm getting old
        
         | gosub100 wrote:
         | Surprised the rapper name lil Hadron isn't taken yet
        
       | ChuckMcM wrote:
       | It will be interesting to see if this work will help us
       | understand why the universe isn't half anti-matter.
        
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