Recently, the LHCb experiment at the LHC announced its first B-Meson (Europeans also call it Beauty). This has special significance for me, as the PEP-II electron-positron collider we were operating at SLAC was a “B -Factory” and made gazillions of these. I did not count them, but the total delivery we made to the BaBar detector over 10 years must have been a billion B-mesons or so. BaBar, together with its sister experiment Belle in Japan, established beyond any doubt the existence of so-called CP-violation in the B-system. In a nutshell, particles and antiparticles are not exact mirror images of each other but differ slightly (in their mass). For this reason the early Universe was not exactly symmetric and a slight excess of matter vs antimatter is thought to have existed. Because of the asymmetry, when matter and antimatter annihilate a slight excess of matter remains. So the antimatter ultimately vanished (for the most part anyway), leaving our matter-dominated Universe. If it weren’t for this asymmetry, we would not exist to ponder this remarkable fact. While the B-Factories were able to establish the existence of CP-violation in the B-meson system and measure it quantitatively, the larger question about the asymmetry in the early Universe remains in essence an open issue because the CP violation in the B-meson system is not sufficient to fully explain the asymmetry (had it been found to be small or zero, this reasoning would have been in serious trouble). So we need to look further, and LHCb is one of the experiments to do just that.
By an amazing coincidence we are currently well into the first round of the Stanley Cup play-offs. This year the Canucks with 104 points in the regular season are drawn against the LA Kings 100 pts in the regular season. Naturally the teams are very well matched up. After 4 games of the best of 7 series, we are tied at 2-2. Tonight is game 5 so in about 4 or 5 hours from now one team will lead the series.
Ultimately one team will win the series – very likely by a margin of 4 games to 3 after a very thrilling Game 7 – but make no mistake, one of the teams will win.
Why will one team come out ahead? Well according to the sports announcers it is because one team will “want it more” than the other.
Perhaps the sportscasters have more insight then we give them credit. Maybe the reason there is matter left after a matter-antimatter annihilation event is that the matter WANTS IT MORE ! Who knows this may in fact be tied to the very meaning of life itself! 😉
cheers,
Simon
Well, another reason could be that, as one colleague of mine once said, positive is always better than begative… which of course does not make sense in this context as, if we were all made of antimatter and no matter, the antimatter would be our matter and vice versa, so, well, you get the idea. Be that as it may, I ‘m off to Chicago now, as I see the planes taking off here at GVA it looks like I will go. Sylvia is off to Italy seeing an old friend from University (in Germany).
Go Canucks!
Uli
2010/4/23,