In the Standard Model of physics, there is a law which states that for every particle of matter, there should be a particle of antimatter. But the Universe, as far as we can tell, is stuffed with matter, and that's a problem. The very fact that it's stuffed with matter, and that we are made of matter, and that we're still here, being matter, shouldn't be allowed. But it is, and that's a problem begging an answer that hasn't yet been found.
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But it's a problem we might be closer to than we think. For our language has allowed us to determine what is negative, and what is positive, and to give rise to some kind of comprehension that the two states - which we experience directly in our mood sequences - represent some kind of polarity. When we are being positive, we cannot be negative, and vice versa, yet we find in the course of our existence that these two frameworks change all the time, in fact they can swap from one to the other quite freely within a matter of minutes. And the same may be true for some particles, certainly for those that are given to oscillate, and the only particles we know to oscillate freely are the quark and the neutrino.

CP violation is a feature of nature which we know to exist, but isn't fully understood. So to break it down, we have two kinds of symmetry violated in CP - Charge symmetry, and Parity. One is the energy involved, the Charge, and the other is the spacial position, the Parity. Violation, in physics terms, means that the behaviour of a particle doesn't agree with the parameters of symmetry, which the Standard Model insists that it should, but instead goes into a different phase of existence which can't be determined within the confines of current physics.

While the conundrums presented by constants and constraints continue to be ravaged by the whims of Nature, we find in the course of our own experience that perfect balance is not that easy to achieve. Being balanced means being neither too high nor too low, in other words occupying our own Goldilocks Zone of equilibrium in which our lives should naturally flourish. But it doesn't work that way, and perhaps the fact that it doesn't work that way gives us a clue as to why SUSY came along to save the day and yet still remains insufficient to explain the wide spectra of anomalies facing the order of things mathematical.

Not forgetting that we're made of Quarks, one of the particles that oscillate, and that Neutrinos - the other oscillator - stream through us from the Sun (and some other sources as well) all the time, our individuality could demonstrate the reason why symmetry in the Universe is so hard to come by. For we are all different in the states we occupy, while we are being who we are, and the Quarks most susceptible to CP violation are heavy quarks, such as those described here in the LHBc experiment. Where you read 'bottom', this Quark was originally called Beauty, and where you read 'top', you can safely replace it with Truth, the terms widely (and happily?) used before Beauty and Truth were kicked out in favour of 'less fluffy' descriptions.

​Believing that the fluffiness of a description hints at true nature, on the basis that synchronicity doesn't make mistakes but scientists often do, it could be said that there is a meaning to these behaviours in the Quark Sector we can actually relate to, which one day might be taken notice of.

While you're busy finding balance in yourself, be content with the possibility that it's impossible to find, and forgive yourself for falling, for in the nature of things, it is natural to fall. Negativity and positivity may well behave in us in very much the same way as they behave in the sub-atomic sectors, and if we need a guiding light to befriend us through our darknesses, it would be as well to remember that although Matter appears to dominate the Universe, Matter is composed of atoms heavily guarded by Electrons, which are negatively charged. Positrons, the antimatter equivalent of the Electron, come into existence here to be swiftly annihilated by their counterparts, which could explain that when we feel positivity, we know that there's no high without a low, and conversely, that every cloud has a silver lining. Bringing our own beings into a balance we can comprehend may depend on how we handle our constituent particles just as much as how we handle the circumstances that appear to influence us. If you find it hard to hold on to a positive outlook, while all around are telling you that positivity is there all the time, this may well be one of those things that we know to be true, thanks to our Truth quarks, and when it's there it's beautiful, as Beauty quarks would have it be, but the Charm of Strangeness dictates that we will have our Ups and Downs, and that is, as they say, just the way it is.

Enjoy the rollercoaster. No-one's getting off any time soon. 
All the pictures have their story of origin linked to them, all of which scratch their heads at the matter/antimatter problem.
​Incidentally, the Truth quark was the last to be found. And it's the biggest one of all.

Whilst engrossed in Powerpoint at the NNN17 Conference last month, I was struck by numerous references to Majorana, and came home on a mission to find out what it was.
Particles have all kinds of theoretical qualities, capabilities and even identities. Most of them have been theorised before they were proven to exist. The neutrino was one such particle, and its journey from the core of the Sun, or from the death of a neutron star, or even from a nuclear power plant, is the object of great scrutiny all around the world - from the giant cavern of SuperKamiokande to the underwater glass array of ORCA, neutrino-dedicated experiments spatter the planet with devices of ingenious complexity. In unfathomable quantities easily measuring billions, neutrinos stream through your body - and everything else - all the time.

Despite the impressive amount of supreme technology, little is known about the neutrino. Originally they were thought to have no mass at all, since they pass through matter, for the most part, unhindered and unseen. The beauty of these experiments lies in their dedication to neutrino detection, and in recent years the theory of No Mass was debunked, clouted soundly round the ear by the discovery of oscillation in 1998. For neutrinos change as they fly from one form into another, and in order to do this, they had to have mass, and that mass naturally had not only to be accounted for, it had to be measured. So it was.
While they are changing from one orientation to the next, neutrinos are said to 'disappear'.
Only, in the discovery of their mass, another conundrum surfaced. CP violation is a headache for physicists, it's an unknown quantity that mucks about with equations and creates more problems than Charge and Parity (the things that are violated) can solve. So in order to potentially quell the dichotomy of CP violation, a man called Ettore Majorana proposed the unthinkable - that the neutrino was, quite possibly, matter and antimatter at the same time. Like the oscillating neutrino, Ettore disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

The prospect of a particle being its own antiparticle doesn't just raise questions for physicists. It raises issues about the nature of the Universe itself, as an article from Stanford News in July of this year explains. There has long been a discontented murmur through the corridors of cosmology concerning where all the antimatter went after the Big Bang, when neutrinos were the dominant material in existence. While the birth of the four forces has since been theorised to most people's evident satisfaction, the mystery of where the antimatter went is one that hasn't lost its flavour. And to further elucidate an already complicated situation, a fifth force is under investigation, and Jonathan Feng (whose team is continuing work started in Hungary two years ago) says of it: “If true, it’s revolutionary. For decades, we’ve known of four fundamental forces...this discovery of a possible fifth force would completely change our understanding of the universe, with consequences for the unification of forces and dark matter.”
Without going into dark matters too deeply, we're clearly on the cusp of something big. And the GUT is telling us, if it's ever to be believed, that five forces plus a Majorana particle could open the door to new physics that wipes the Standard Model clean off the slate in terms of progressive critique. 

We, as ordinary non-scientific people interested in what all this means to us personally, are not exempt from the possible fallout of a Majorana neutrino. For while at the time of writing there are few experiments in existence dedicated to unravelling the possibilities of how neutrinos interact with quarks, they assuredly do interact with quarks one way or another. (On reading the article previously linked, you might be tempted to believe for a brief moment that this poetic muse might not be so far-fetched after all.) Like many on the outskirts of this fascinating science, I'm waiting with bated breath to see what kind of miracle Majorana mechanics might have in store, and how it might benefit us to know, one way or another, what the neutrino is saying to the building blocks of our own bodies on its flight from the stars.

After lunch on the last day of the NNN17 Conference at Warwick, lead organiser Gary Barker shook my hand and said he was glad I'd been there! I told him about my previous experiences with conference organisers not generally being so great, and he replied, "Well, if you'd taken up a lot of question time I might have been concerned, but you didn't." So my one decent question (about Kaluza-Klein 5D formula being identical to Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism) and my one dire question (about neutrinos decaying into quarks, which they can't do) were ok - thank Heavens for that. The full write-up had to be edited a lot, because I took forty pages of notes and had a problem choosing the info to publish. But it's here, and up there on the Menu bar. Turning out to be written in what's become my traditional style but with links to major terminologies and principles, the record I hope reflects the light of the event, for the new information to come from it was, I feel, critically important. 

Neutrinos never cease to amaze me, and the ground covered by the scientific community since Cryodet ll, in 2008, my first ever mission into physicist's territory (where a brush with Carlo Rubbia proved prickly with consequences), shows in the language becoming more enquiring, open-minded, and inviting of new ideas than it was then, when stuff like supersymmetry and CP violation were accepted as part of an unknown process with an unequivocal air of "we just don't know about that.". Now they are laid on the table along with the increasingly-shaky Standard Model as areas hungry for new interpretation, and everyone awaits the next breakthrough with bated breath, knowing that Dark Matter has heralded a new era of exploration and that whatever happens in the lepton sector, it's going to be exciting.

Conference days were full of Powerpoint but every minute was worth the attention given and every discussion worthwhile. Snatching moments when convenience nudged open a doorway in spacetime, I recorded interviews with a few of the speakers which I'll include in posts over the next few weeks - here for starters is Jacobo Lopez-Pavon (who presented on Theoretical Review of Neutrino Oscillations) talking to me before lunch on Saturday.
And here's Matt Wetstein, taking me under his wing after my dire question. Matt gave a brilliant summary of the Parallel ll sessions at the end of the event, when he enthusiastically took the floor to take up this hefty challenge in style. 

NNN17 content will doubtless feature in future Blogs as so much information came from that conference, and I intend to serve full credit where it's due. To summarise here, suffice to say an atmosphere of positive tension and the excitement of new gateways being just around the corner is almost palpable, and it is not without trepidation that we can await the fate of the Standard Model when oscillation and the true nature of neutrino interactions really starts to come to light.