New findings have physicists questioning reality

physicists believe that when time began at the moment of the Big Bang matter and antimatter were created in equal amounts and based on recent measurements made CERN laboratory in Switzerland it seems there is perfect symmetry between the two which they say implies that our universe should not exist what okay here to talk about this perhaps disconcerting discovery is CBS news science and futurist contributor and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku all right professor Kaku so can you explain first of all what antimatter is and how is it different from the matter that we interact with every day well there's a nobel prize out there if you can figure out how this thing works antimatter is the mirror image of ordinary matters extremely rare if I had some in my hand it looked like ordinary matter has the same chemical properties except if I touch it it would explode and destroy all of New York City parts of Connecticut and New Jersey Oh every Star Trek fan knows that this is the greatest energy source in the universe matter antimatter collision okay all right so that's it well what is it about this symmetry between matter and antimatter that you know leads CERN's physicists to this conclusion that we shouldn't exist the universe shouldn't exist well at the instant of the Big Bang they should have an equal quantities of matter antimatter which annihilated driving the Big Bang so by rights we shouldn't be here right because we have more matter than antimatter in our sector of the galaxy well look for anti galaxies we've looked for anti planets we don't see any I don't even understand what that means but okay go ahead antimatter anti planets because they would be made up of an time and that's right there should be anti people anti love and time CBS but in fact we see no evidence of that at all so physicists say by rights we shouldn't exist this means that at the instant of the Big Bang there was a slight overabundance of matter over antimatter and here we are as a consequence now why this is one of the greatest mysteries in all of physics we are clueless to understand why and like I said if you want to win a Nobel Prize figure this one out why was it there's a slight overabundance of matter or or antimatter yeah all right well tell us more about these experiments at CERN is doing to answer or at least try to answer these questions well they take an atom smasher and they take the energy out of it and put it into a bottle that's called a magnetic bottle you can actually trap anti hydrogen and tie electrons going around anti protons and when they measure the property of anti hydrogen is exactly like ordinary hydrogen except of course they would annihilate if they touch each other and that's so frustrating you want to tear your hair out right they were looking for an asymmetry between matter antimatter they find none and so that's the mystery why do we exist at all by rights we shouldn't be here Yeah right we should have been disintegrated at the instant of the Big Bang yes well I'm sure there are all kinds of theories out there but what are physicists kind of focusing in on is there one theory two theories that are kind of the main focus well the leading theory is something called string theory which is what I do for a living it's I'm one of the founders of the subject in fact years ago but even string theory has a hard time because you have to sort of like put it in by hand and we want the theory to naturally come out with this overabundance of matter over antimatter which explains what we don't say anti galaxies out there and anti planets but we have a hard time doing it so right now nobody has a convincing answer to this question why should we be here Wow okay well I won't ask you to give us a 30-second rundown on string theory because I think it'll probably take longer than that maybe we'll have you back some time but dr. Michio Kaku thank you so much for helping us understand this or at least ponder the question why are we here

Channel: CBS News

Views: 4,109,532

Keywords: video, live streaming, live video, cbsn, universe, CERN, matter, antimatter, Michio Kaku

Id: jrXGfK5I_rU

Length: 3min 52sec (232 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 26 2017