Why in the News?
CERN scientists have detected a tiny but significant difference in how matter and antimatter versions of baryons behave — offering clues to why matter dominates the universe, despite both being created equally after the Big Bang.
What is CERN’s LHCb Experiment?
- Location: At the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, on the France–Switzerland border.
- Name: LHCb = Large Hadron Collider beauty; focuses on beauty (bottom) quarks.
- Started: Built in early 2000s; began collecting data in 2009.
- Purpose: Studies particle decay, especially of beauty quark-containing particles, to test the Standard Model and search for small anomalies.
Matter vs Antimatter – The Big Puzzle:
- Matter: Everything around us is made of it.
- Antimatter: Mirror image of matter, with opposite charges.
- Big Bang Theory: Both should have been produced equally — and destroyed each other.
- But…: Only matter remains — a mystery science is still trying to solve.
- CP Symmetry: Physics expects matter and antimatter to behave identically (Charge-Parity symmetry).
- CP Violation: When this symmetry breaks — possibly explaining why matter survived.
What did Scientists Discover?
- Focus: Lambda-b baryons and their antimatter versions.
- Finding: A small but clear CP violation — they decayed differently.
- Significance: First such discovery in baryons (previously seen only in mesons).
- Certainty: Highly reliable — only 1 in 3.5 million chance it’s random.
Why is this Important?
- Helps explain why the universe is made of matter.
- Expands discovery of CP violation to heavier particles.
- Could hint at physics beyond the Standard Model.
- Moves us closer to solving one of the universe’s biggest mysteries.
| [UPSC 2013] The efforts to detect the existence of Higgs boson particle have become frequent news in the recent past. What is/are the importance/importances of discovering this particle?
1. It will enable us to under-stand as to why elementary particles have mass. 2. It will enable us in the near future to develop the technology of transferring matter from one point to another without traversing the physical space between them. 3. It will enable us to create better fuels for nuclear fission. Select the correct answer using the codes given below. Options: (a) 1 only* (b) 2 and 3 only (c) 1 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3 |
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