Scientists Are Getting Closer to Find Out why Does Matter Exists
So far, it was believed that matter stays in place due to the EDM property of neutrons. The Electric Dipole Momentum is the measure of the separation of positive and negative electrical charges within a system. EDM is a measure of the system’s overall polarity. Each of the poles of a neutron is slightly charged. One of the poles is a negative one, and the other a positive one. Like a magnet. In other words, matter stayed in place due to its neutrons’ polarity.
A new study – made by the University of Sussex, the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK, the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, several other institutions – shake things up and says it is not quite so.
The outcome
The outbreak of the research is that the neutron has a smaller EDM than previously thought. Until now, it was impossible to measure the EDM due to its tiny dimension. Not all EDM can be estimated, not even now, only those of big enough neutrons. So, thins are still blurry when it comes to conclusions. But this discovery might become the reason for which many theories were disproved before. And all these might become the reason for rewriting physics laws. Someday.
The study addresses one of the most disturbing questions in cosmology: “why the Universe contains so much more matter than antimatter, and, indeed, why it now contains any matter at all. Why didn’t the antimatter cancel out all the matter? Why is there any matter left?”. They were formulated by Professor Philip Harris, Head of the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences and leader of the EDM group at the University of Sussex.
Antimatter vs. matter
Antimatter preferred to do things differently than matter. Antimatter particles bind with each other to form antimatter, just as ordinary particles bind to form normal matter. It is defined as a matter which is composed of the antiparticles of the corresponding particles of ordinary matter. The antineutron is the antiparticle of the neutron. It differs from the neutron only in that some of its properties have equal magnitude but opposite signs. It has the same mass as the neutron, and no net electric charge.
Revealing the neutron’s real EDM might reconcile the antimatter with its twin: matter. “We can probe questions relevant to high-energy particle physics and the fundamental nature of the symmetries underlying the universe,” said Dr. Clark Griffith, Lecturer in Physics from the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Sussex.
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