The HUDF09 Team is made up of G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
The universe is made up of more matter than antimatter, which is one of the biggest mysteries. A group of theoretical physicists say they know how to find the answer. They need to detect the waves produced by Q balls.
When matter interacts with antimatter, the two antimatter partners are destroyed. It's a mystery that our existence is a mystery, as it's believed that at the dawn of the universe, equal amounts of matter and antimatter were produced, leaving the universe devoid of any matter at all. Researchers are slowly uncovering the reasons why matter exists.
Q balls, theoretical "lumps" that formed in the moments after the Big bang, may be a possible reason. Each Q ball would have equal portions of matter and antimatter. The Q balls would have released more matter than antimatter. The paper claims that we could detect these objects using waves.
Big bang in 10 easy steps.
The fabric of the universe is covered in different quantum fields, each of which describes a property in space. The fundamental particles that make up our physical reality are the result of fluctuations in these fields. Imagine a trampoline with a bowling ball in the center. The shape of the bowling ball and the trampoline shows how much energy is coming from any point on the field, closer to the center depression. The shape of a field is just as important as the shape of the trampoline is in determining how a marble will roll.
The fields that governed the early balloon-like inflation of the universe had to be shallow in order for that to happen, according to a theory proposed in 1985. The field's shape meant that the energy governing the inflation of the universe remained the same, even though a marble rolling around a bowling ball's shallow depression doesn't gain or lose much speed.
Inflation requires that the field not interact too strongly with any other trampolines in order to create particles. The field interacted with others in a way that created more matter particles than antimatter particles. The field contained the particles in clumps in order to maintain the uniform shape.
These are called Q balls. "They're just a bunch of field," said Graham White, a physicist at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe.
The Q balls were around as the universe expanded. They become the most important part of the universe in terms of how much energy is in them compared to the rest of the universe.
They don't last forever. When the Q balls disappear, they produce sound waves. The sound waves act as a source for the ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves. White's team argues that if the waves do exist, they can be measured by the underground Einstein Telescope and NASA's Laser Interferometer Space Array.
There are other theories to explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe. White said that since we're at an exciting point where if one of these paradigms is correct, we can probably prove it. That's really exciting if we see them. Even if detectors fail to find the Q-ball ripples, it's good news because simpler theories are easier to test. It's a bit of a no-lose.
Live Science published the original article.
