Nepal the hometown of nature

ANTIMATTER’S MYSTERY AND 

HUMAN CIVILIZATION 

     Suppose, you are tossing a coin. You know you can just have two possible outcomes- head and tail; therefore, the probability of both of the outcomes is half of a one. If you toss a coin a hundred times, you will possibly get fifty times a head and fifty times a tail as per the probability theory. If we follow the same probability theory then, we should not have been existed and I would not have been writing this article. The big bang explosion must have produced normal matter and anti-matter in the same proportion as defined by the probability theory, but everyone of us and everything around us is made of normal matter. Why is anti-matter so rare? If anti-matter and normal existed in same amount in the universe, then they should have canceled each other and we should not have existed. This leads to a possible conclusion that at the time of big bang, normal matter was formed more in proportion than its counterpart- anti-matter. The question is why it happened so. What was the mysterious power behind the domination of normal matter over anti-matter?

     I again want to take you to the coin experiment but this time there is a little twist. Imagine that you have four coins rotating around their axes on a table. The probability law says that two of the coins will stop keeping head above and two will stop keeping the tail above, but you bring an external factor into play. You take a coin in your hands, flip it to rotate it around its axis such that it hits all four coins during its motion. Now the equation of probability changes. Because of that extra coin hitting all other coins, more coins will stop keeping the head or tail above. It means one outcome will be in excessive than the other. This is the theory that scientists put forward about the anti-matter asymmetry that there was some force during the creation of the universe that led the domination of normal matter and anti-matter.

    The above postulation is not the only possible one. There are other speculations as well. We see that the earth, the other planets, the sun and the galaxies and everything in the observable universe are made of normal matter. Is not possible that somewhere else in our universe or in another universe, the cosmological bodies are made of anti-matter: anti-electrons, anti- proton, and anti-neutron. It might be possible that intelligent creatures like us made of anti-matter also exist and they might think that the anti-matter is actually the normal matter. Nevertheless, these are just speculations. There is no way at present we can prove them or deny them.

     There are two possible reasons for the disparity between the normal matter and antimatter. The reason can be that the universe started with preference to matter. The other interpretation can be that a phenomena caused the asymmetry shifting the equilibrium to normal matter over time. Neither the general relativity nor the standard model of physics provide a convincing explanation of the asymmetry. The hypothetical process that caused matter antimatter asymmetry is said to be the baryogenesis which occurred during the creation of the early universe. There are two different baryogenesis theories. The first one is electroweak baryogenesis based on the standard model. It is thought to occur in electeoweak epoch: the period in the evolution of early universe when the temperature had fallen enough that the strong force separated from the electroweak force but was high enough so that the weak interaction force and electromagnetic force are in combined state and the GUT (Grand Unified theory) Baryongenesis which is supposed to be occurred after grand unification epoch- the period during three out of the four fundamental forces except gravitational force were combined to form electronuclear force.

     Whatever the theories might be, it should obey the laws of quantum mechanics. If we cancel out the hypothesis that the universe begun with more normal matter concentration, only two things can guide us to the asymmetry. The first one is that the two kinds of matter were produced at different rates or they are decayed at different . The different rates of production of normal matter and antimatter can be characterized by the three conditions proposed by Andrei Sakharov in 1967: Baryon number violation, C-symmetry and CP- symmetry violation, and Interactions out of thermal equilibrium. Similarly, the different rates of decay can be defined by EDM( Electric Dipole Moment) which violate both parity and time symmetries.

      I repeat none of these theories I addressed can not completely explain the bizarre nature of antimatter. The question is why we need to know about antimatter. What can be its usefulness for our civilization. The speed our civilization is growing and the speed it wants to acquire needs an ultimate source of energy. Nuclear reactors, solar energy and all other sources of energy will not let us to travel in light years in space. Antimatter matter annihilation can be our key interstellar travel. The energy density of antimatter is extremely high in comparison with that of normal matter. If we do not want to end up as dinosaurs, someday we need to leave our earth. Moreover, we can get rid of the devastating affects which coal mines and nuclear reactors have on our ecosystem. The only problem is we don’t have antimatter in sufficient amount. To produce antimatter, we need tremendous amount of energy and storing antimatter is another headache as it instantaneously reacts with normal matter  Trust me the numbers you have heard about the cost of one gram of antimatter do not have any sort of credibility. The other potential method can be extracting antimatter from outside the earth, but wait! I said antimatter are not found in our observable universe in big quantity. It is true till now but might be false in future. Since stars made by antimatter will show similar properties like absorption and emission spectra, it is difficult to distinguish between which astronomical objects are made up of antimatter. NASA Institute of advanced Concepts is trying to explore whether it is possible to use magnetic scoops to collect antimatter in the Van Allen Belt of our earth and other parts of our galaxy including the gas belts of planets like Jupiter.

     The conclusion is that the universe is always expanding, so does scopes of science and same thing is happens with our curiosity. It took a hundred years to find the scientific proof of Einstein’s relativity. We need to make up our mind that antimatter annihilation is possible, find a theoretical method of it and may be after hundreds of years it will be possible.