Scientists make rare achievement in study of antimatter
symmetrymagazine.org
symmetrymagazine.org
We don't have any evidence that matter DOES dominate the universe. Distant galaxies could easily be composed of antimatter. Since the Big Bang should have created equal amounts of both, you would expect that in the vast majority of cases they would annihilate one another, leading to a universe overwhelmingly dominated by (wait for it) empty space.
We have tons of evidence that matter dominates our neck of the woods. Regions where one form is dominant over the other may be in the minority, but you would have to enter such a region to find stars, planets, and galaxies. The fact that we're here means that this must be an area where one type is everywhere and the other is almost completely absent. But as best we can tell, the fact that we're all made of matter rather than antimatter is the result of a very old coin flip. The probability that all of the galaxies we can see landed on the matter side of the coin is infinitesimal.
Here is one I found in a quick search:
The boundary between any group of anti-matter galaxies and the region of space where matter is dominant should emit gamma rays, as the intergalactic wind pushes dust particles made of regular matter into one of the anti-matter galaxies. We don't see such gamma ray emissions in our observations of the cosmos.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2016/12/27/could...
If you can come up with some compelling mechanism for it then sure it may be possible, but currently that seems to be more complex and fails to provide any support of any kind.
If there were such a sorting process that was inherently linked to cosmological horizons, it could explain both where the antimatter went, and why we don't see an annihilation zone where the boundaries meet.
On the other hand if you say something like "Air becomes blue when it's colder." Then you can actually test what's going on and falsify the statement which may lead to progress.
Suppose you suggest the output of this experiment will change over time. Now, waiting a billion years is not going to happen but adding even more digits of accuracy may be possible.
I could edit my original comment to be more accurate and make a more limited point, but it's probably best to let it stand as-is, for anyone else who may have similar thoughts.
The reason: They probably know better than you and not just making an "assumption".
For example, I used to think that they were "speculating" about the big bang happening and the formation of the universe. Until I learned about the Cosmic Microwave background. These guys know better than making wild guesses.
Basically this is the "boring" science, not the exciting "hmm, that's odd" science. It's very important science of course, the sort that you need for science to actually work, but it is rather boring from the perspective of someone outside looking in on the process.
It seems to me that so often we apply, in completely good faith, base characteristics to others when considering them as a group, yet simultaneously it seems like few would ever say those characteristics actually apply to themselves.
Mostly just a random thought that occurred when reading your post. It's interesting to consider things like all movies becoming explosions and CG because 'everybody else loves that stuff' even though ticket sales have declined by 30% since 2002 (gross receipts are up thanks to substantial increases in price). Or similarly at the same time everybody focuses on 'hot' science, trust and arguably (and paradoxically) even interest seems to be rapidly declining.
There's a famous quote out there that goes something like 'the most exciting words in science aren't "Eureka", they're "that's odd"', and I feel that's highly applicable in this case. There's no "that's odd" event here, everything is exactly as expected, it all worked perfectly and produced exactly the result that was expected. That's great for affirming that all our theories are correct, and as I said this is a breakthrough in the quality of measurements we can achieve, but it's not a new mystery to explore, or an unexpected result that we can use to refine or develop new theories. Basically everything we didn't know before this experiment we still don't know, and we don't have any new data points except for having eliminated an area of uncertainty that new interesting data might have been hiding in.
Sort of like a murder misery where everyone at a party has a reliable alibi. Suggesting something even odder must be going on.
Super impressed with their antimatter containment solution though, I had no idea anybody could even get close to that kind of containment duration.