One of the biggest cosmological mysteries is why the universe is made up of way more matter than antimatter, essentially why we exist. Now, a team of theoretical physicists says they know how to find the answer. All they need to do is detect the gravitational waves produced by bizarre quantum objects called Q balls.
Every kind of ordinary matter particle has an antimatter partner with opposing characteristics — and when matter interacts with antimatter, the two annihilate each other. That fact makes our existence a mystery, as cosmologists are pretty sure that at the dawn of the universe, equal amounts of matter and antimatter were produced; those matter and antimatter partners should have all annihilated each other, leaving the universe devoid of any matter at all. Yet matter exists, and researchers are slowly uncovering the reasons why.
One potential reason may lie in Q balls, theoretical “lumps” that formed in the moments after the Big Bang, before the universe inflated rapidly like a balloon. These objects would contain their own matter-antimatter asymmetry, meaning within each Q ball would exist unequal portions of matter and antimatter. As these Q balls “popped” they would have released more matter than antimatter — and unleashed gravitational ripples in space-time. If these objects really existed, we could detect them using gravitational waves, according to a new paper published Oct. 27 in the journal Physical Review Letters.
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