Results in on why life, the universe and everything exists
10-year study indicates that theoretically it shouldn't
Cloud storage: Lower cost and increase uptime
It's one of the most difficult questions that human philosophy and science have ever faced: Why are we here? Why is the universe and all that's in it here?
The question becomes particularly knotty when one reflects on modern physics and the issue of antimatter. Theory shows that at the creation of the universe, equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been called into existence.
The trouble here is that when matter meets antimatter, both are instantly annihilated in a devastating blast of energy. Thus, according to theory, everything should have swiftly become nothing again. Instead, much much later, we see a universe in which there's a lot of normal matter - though certainly very thinly spread out - and almost no antimatter at all.
What boffinry can't account for is why there should have been more matter than antimatter at the beginning, and thus how it is that life, the universe and everything comes to be in existence now.
"The question is: why was there an excess of one over the other in the first place?" says Pieter Mumm, physicist at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology. "There are lots of theories attempting to explain the imbalance, but there's no experimental evidence to show that any of them can account for it. It's a huge mystery on the level of asking why the universe is here. Accepted physics can't explain it."
Mumm and his colleagues had rather been hoping to sort this out by conducting a 10-year probe into neutron decay at the NIST Centre for Neutron Research. There are two ways for a neutron to decay: both result in a proton, an electron and an electron antineutrino, but they come out in different configurations. If the lengthy investigation had shown that either path was more commonly taken than the other, this would have given the physicists a handle on just why anything now exists.
Sadly from the point of view of an answer to the Great Question, no such difference could be detected. Still, Mumm and the crew aren't too downhearted as their results, at least, have shut off various speculative theories.
"We have placed very tight constraints on what these theories can say," Mumm says. "We have given theory something to work with. And if we can modify our detector successfully, we can envision limiting large classes of theories. It will help ensure the physics community avoids traveling down blind alleys."
The research is published in Physical Review Letters, and there's commentary for laymen by NIST here. ®
COMMENTS
That just moves the goalpoasts (and only very slightly)
Universe is here because God made it.
So... Why is God here?
Because He is.
So... occams razor, cut out the middle-diety as a surfluous step and conclude the universe is here "because it is".
Hypothesis fails for lack of actual content.
The Universe cannot be infinite and eternal
This is quite easy to prove:
Look up at night. You will notice that the sky is dark.
If the Universe were infinite and eternal then no matter which direction you looked, you would be looking directly at the surface of a star.
Thus the night sky could not be dark, it would have to be bright, and therefore, the universe cannot be both infinite in size and eternal.
This thought experiment has the following results:
1) The universe could be infinite in size if it is not eternal, as the light from the distant stars might not have reached us yet.
2) The universe could also be finite and eternal, as then there are only a finite number of stars.
By using other thought experiments we can prove the universe cannot be finite and eternal, by use of gravity (everything would have collapsed together) and entropy (the stars would have gone out).
That leaves 1) - Infinite but not eternal. This doesn't seem to make sense as it requires an infinitely large thing to have been created at a defined moment in the past.
Incidentally, the reason we think dark matter exists is because we think Einstein's theory of gravitation is right - Remember that Newton's theory is identical to Einstein's at low spacial curvature, eg around a planet-sized mass and at a long distance from a star.
Einstein's theory precisely matches the behaviour of every atomic particle observed in our solar system - it is therefore known to be right.
However, it's also known to be inaccurate at subatomic scales - there is no religious reverence for Einstein's theory.
The Standard Model seems to handle subatomic really well, but again doesn't quite work at larger scales.
So, there are already a lot of scientists trying to find a better description of reality - that's what scientists do!
Which question ?
WHY are we here?
Why are WE here?
Why are we HERE?
Why ARE we here?
Natural languages suck.
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Cloud storage: Lower cost and increase uptime
SaaS data loss: The problem you didn’t know you had
