Who ordered *that*?
May. 20th, 2010 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
essentialsaltesNeutral B mesons preferentially decay into matter (rather than antimatter).
Apparently, this is not merely CP-violation, which is fairly well understood and first discovered in the decays of neutral kaons (the B's in the current experiment can be thought of as the kaons' much heavier cousins). According to the abstract, the effect "differs by 3.2 standard deviations from the standard model prediction," suggesting that some unknown process is responsible for favoring matter over antimatter. This is intriguing, since the known CP-violating processes appear to be incapable of producing the matter that exists in the universe.
So... it looks like new physics beyond the Standard Model, and a potential solution to an outstanding problem. If this pans out, trips to Oslo will follow.
Apparently, this is not merely CP-violation, which is fairly well understood and first discovered in the decays of neutral kaons (the B's in the current experiment can be thought of as the kaons' much heavier cousins). According to the abstract, the effect "differs by 3.2 standard deviations from the standard model prediction," suggesting that some unknown process is responsible for favoring matter over antimatter. This is intriguing, since the known CP-violating processes appear to be incapable of producing the matter that exists in the universe.
So... it looks like new physics beyond the Standard Model, and a potential solution to an outstanding problem. If this pans out, trips to Oslo will follow.
