Universe’s If no matter had been left over after the Big Bang, the universe would have no stars, galaxies or planets, University of Hawaii physicists said.
asymmetry theorized
UH scientists say there was
more matter than antimatter
right after the Big BangBy Helen Altonn
haltonn@starbulletin.comThat did not happen, they said, because of a lack of symmetry: More matter than antimatter was created in the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang.
The Big Bang is a widely accepted scientific theory that the universe was created 10 billion to 20 billion years ago by a cosmic explosion hurling matter in different directions.
Members of the UH High Energy Physics Group in the Department of Physics and Astronomy were major contributors to the discovery of asymmetry in the matter by a worldwide research group, the Belle experimental team.
UH participants were Stephen Olsen, principal investigator of the high energy group and co-spokesman for the Belle team, and faculty members Tom Browder, Michael Jones and Michael Peters.
The experiment was carried out with the KEKB accelerator at the KEK laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan. Parts of the accelerator were built at UH and shipped to Japan about three years ago.
Announcing their discovery at a recent meeting in Rome, the Belle team said matter and antimatter in the universe "don't follow exactly the same rules."
Peters, in an interview, said a Russian scientist many years ago said there were three requirements for matter to be left over after the Big Bang.
One was that the symmetry had to be violated -- that matter and antimatter cannot behave the same, he said.
"It's not that we didn't know it was violated," he said, noting a Nobel Prize was given in 1980 for discovery of a "very tiny violation."
However, he said the Belle group's work "is the first definitive evidence of symmetry violation in any other experiments. We were the first to find it unequivocally."
Another group is operating a similar experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in California.
The research both in Japan and California shows the symmetry was violated within a second after the Big Bang, Peters said. But the Belle group shows nearly the highest possible violation and "near certainty that the universe is not symmetric," he said.
If matter and antimatter had behaved the same, equal numbers of particles and anti-particles would have been created, and the matter and antimatter would have been annihilated after the first flash of creation, he said. The universe would have been left with nothing but gamma rays, X-rays and light, he said.
"There would have been no matter to make the galaxies, stars and planets we observe."
Because of the asymmetry discovered by the Belle team, he said, more matter than antimatter was created, and some matter remained after the annihilation phase.
The result is consistent with the best model of the particles and fields that make up the universe, Peters said.
The scientists worked to the last minute in Japan before leaving for Rome to make sure their findings were correct, he said.
"The important thing is, without this asymmetry, when the Big Bang happened, shortly after, all particles and antiparticles in equal numbers would have annihilated each other, and there would be no physical material in the world," Peters said. "If symmetry held, there would be no universe."
Ka Leo O Hawaii
University of Hawaii
