The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

I thought it was funny this morning that two stories were headlining the Yahoo! homepage, next to each other.

The first: A new discovery could explain why we exist (http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20100518/sc_space/whyweexistmatterwinsbattleoverantimatter)

The second: Megan Fox is out of Transformers 3 (http://movies.yahoo.com/news/usmovies.accesshollywood.com/updated-megan-fox-dropped-from-transformers-3)

When put next to each other, it seems as though both are competing to explain the same theory.

Bummer about Megan. Shes sooo hot!

So what does the first article tell us about the nature of our universe exactly? Why does matter trump antimatter significantly in nature? Imagine our universe if this wasn't the case as predicted by our current theories...

I'm guessing that no one really knows why this occurs, it's just something we've observed. Maybe it was predicted by theory, I'm not really sure.

It's something we knew had to be happening. Our theories allowed it, but didn't predict it. If you suspected that this would happen, though, they definitely pointed you in the right direction. So the experiment was done, and sure enough, the effect was found. Now they can find out more about the nature of the difference.

I was referring to this " ...but at this time the apparent asymmetry of matter and antimatter in the visible universe is one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter

I don't think our theories "allowed it". We might have had to adjust our theories to include the fact of it.  And yes, we definately didn't predict this situation at all.

Just out of curiousity, what theories allowed for this?

The weak force breaks a whole lot of symmetries. In particular, CP violation (in the neutral Kaon). Once they discovered that, it was the prime suspect in the origin of matter.


Science is, when done well, conservative. If some theorist says (or even many theorists say), "Hey, I have an idea that would explain this phenomenon", the mystery is not at that time solved.
! ! !


Our theories fall into two categories: incomplete, and wrong. Those in the former category had enough room in the unknown bits to be compatible with this development.

You seem to be saying that this is a simple matter of an incomplete piece to a puzzle and the next discovery will snap into place once discovered. Thus making the complete picture a percentage more complete and the window to our universe a little more clear. My understanding is somewhat different. As an armchair scientist of the science channel and internet journal reading school, this is a major anomoly and indicates that there is somthing fundamental to nature that we don't understand. The precise mathematical equations (that I barely understand) will have to be completely rewritten according to some experts.

That's probably the effect of the Ultimate Evil, that evades all detection, but is really there.

Heck no. When I say 'incomplete' I mean, 'really seriously incomplete, and this is just fitting several more pieces in'.


Well, yes.


Really? We've known basically since it was discovered around 50 years ago that the weak force breaks a lot of symmetries. This is just another one. I was taught that this effect was suspected to exist over a decade ago, though the details weren't clear.


Yeah. So? The new equations will reduce to the old ones in all of the old cases. Having to provide a more general form to your equations isn't as catastrophic as you seem to say. This is nothing compared to the advent of relativity or quantum mechanics, or even quantum field theory. It's much more signficant than, say, finding the top quark, and could well be on par with finding the higgs or supersymmetry particles.

Let me put it this way. The analysis in question was looking for this effect (the experiments were more general-purpose, but the data were newly analyzed, blind). They looked specifically for something that was suggested by theory to produce this effect, and it did. The theory is incomplete, which is why they don't fully understand it; but there is a reasonable starting point.

You see this is all very interesting, but where does Megan Fox fit into the story?

She is made of matter, not antimatter.

She's made of yumtonium.

Megan Fox is ugly and utterly untalented, she's anti-actress _{*book it*}