NASA/JPL-Caltech
Particle illustration exploding in the primitive universe
There is a significant imbalance between matter and antimatter in our universe, but a strange particle called “The Majorane” could finally explain it, suggests a new and audacious study.
A hidden family of “Ghost particles”It can be responsible for all dark matter in the universe – and for reason why there is matter, suggests a new study.
One of the most intriguing questions of modern cosmology is the reason why the Universe is full of matter.
The problem is that almost all fundamental particle reactions produce exact numbers of matter particles and antimatterwhich then annihilate each other in flashes of energy.
But the universe has a abundance of matter and very little antimatter. So why didn’t everything disappear simply in the primitive universe?
The problem is known as Barioogeseand the main hypothesis is that some unknown process led to an imbalance between matter and antimatter in the early moments of Big Bang. But what was this process?
Still a few days ago, a study of CERN researchers suggested that the response to the mystery of how the universe did not self-destructed due to anti-material-which violate a principle of designated particles physics symmetry cargo-parity.
Now, Another investigation suggests that the answer may actually be in small particles ghostly known as neutrinos. The investigation was in arXiv And it has not yet been reviewed by peers.
They exist Three varieties of neutrinosand they all have bizarre properties. On the one hand, they have only one doughmuch lower than the mass of electrons, explains the.
Also They are all “lefties”which means that its spins internal ones are guided bypenalties in a direction when they travel, unlike all other particles that can be guided in both directions.
This fact led to the speculation that There may be more varieties of neutrinos that have not yet been detected – the destroyed counterparts of known neutrinos. This is because the interactions between the varieties of right neutrinos and lefties can make them have pasta.
A SHARED UNIVERSITY
In their article, the investigators proposed a model in which there are two species of right -hand neutrinos with very high masses. The model showed that, in the first moments of the universe, the neutrinos right and left They were in perfect balance.
But as the cosmos expanded and cool, this balance broke, leading to a symmetry which caused the left neutrinos to acquire their mass and the neutrinos rights to disappear from sight. But the researchers model found that this cataclysmic change also had other consequences.
On the one hand, as neutrinos interact with other particles, the breaking of their symmetry triggered a chain reaction that has undergone the delicate balance between matter and antimatter.
Secondly, suggest the authors of the study, the right neutrinos mingled to Create a completely new particlethat the investigators designate “The Majorane“.
This is a hypothetical particle that It is your own anti-particleand the investigators’ calculations showed that this particle would have been produced in abundance in the chaos of the primitive universe.
The Majorane would then survive as a relic of those ancient timesconstituting the Most of the mass of all galaxiesbut remaining invisible and dodge. In other words, it would be A candidate for black matterthe mysterious hidden substance that fills the cosmos.
It is an audacious but comprehensive proposal. According to the researchers, a single mechanism could explain the strange properties of neutrinos, the bariogenesis that led to the predominance of matter in the universe and the appearance of mysterious black matter.
To date, There is no experimental evidence From the existence of right neutrinos, much less than something even more exotic as the Majorane. But investigators predict that if the Majorane exists, it may be within the detectability interval of various neutrinal experiences.
Only time will say If one of these experiments will find a new sign that align with this hypothesis – but if that happens, we may be on the way to resolve a series of cosmological mysteries.
