Matter and Anti-matter : New Study
Physicists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment reported confirmed evidence of Charge-Parity (CP) violation in a class of particles called baryons.
- This is the first statistically significant confirmation of CP violation in baryons, marking a potential breakthrough in understanding the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe.
- Matter is anything that has mass and occupies space, composed of atoms and molecules.
- Primary States:
- Solid: Fixed shape and volume.
- Liquid: Fixed volume, no fixed shape.
- Gas: No fixed shape or volume.
- Other States – Plasma, Bose-Einstein Condensate and Fermionic Condensate.
- State Changes: Driven by temperature and pressure, e.g., melting, evaporation, condensation.
- Antimatter consists of particles that are mirror counterparts of matter, with opposite electric charge.
- Electron → Positron, Proton → Antiproton, Neutron → Antineutron
- Both matter and antimatter were created during the Big Bang in equal amounts.
- When matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate each other, producing gamma rays.
- Sources: Natural: Cosmic rays and radioactive decay.
- Particle accelerators like the LHC simulate conditions similar to the Big Bang, producing antiparticles.
