The problem at issue is that in the Big Bang model both matter and antimatter should have been created equally, but probing around tells us that the universe is currently made of matter. So what happened? There must have been something slightly asymmetric between the two that made the anti-matter vanish faster. Such asymmetries exist, but so far don't seem big enough to make the difference.
The Daya Bay experiment found a "mixing angle" that defines the rate at which different kinds of neutrinos transform into each other. That turned out to be unexpectedly large, which has physicists all excited. It was a very good piece of research.
Maybe this could be the cornerstone of a model that lets us explain the missing antimatter. But we're not there yet and it is premature to say so.
(*) There's something a little odd about that "cool" feeling, though: as though extra glory reflected on us bystanders because "our people" were in the official news. I've been a little contemptuous of the folks who act as though they became real when they appeared on TV; it is a little disconcerting to find the same impulse so close to home.
1 comment:
Yeah, but "Neutrino Transformation Rate Unexpectedly Large" isn't going to get a glance from the general reader. I don't think I have fully appreciated until now that the fluffed-up headlines at least tell us why the research might be important, even if it has not yet risen to that level.
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