Universe shouldn’t exist, CERN physicists conclude | Hacker News Reader

Universe shouldn’t exist, CERN physicists conclude

cosmosmagazine.com

34 pointsnitramm9 comments

seems like a lazy conclusion. maybe our model doesnt account for the data.

More likely a lazy headline. It reads better than "Existence of our universe discovered to be statistically improbable but, due to the infinite nature of time, also inevitable"

If "the big bang" was just one in a series of big bangs / big annihilations, then eventually one will have a random scattering of matter and anti-matter in which there will be enough non-mixing of the two (all the matter on the right and all the anti-matter on the left) that the result of the big bang will take much longer to reach the big annihilation. And if the expansion continues to grow, as current evidence suggests, then maybe it'll never annihilate, it'll just heat-death out.

Or something.

What does "infinite nature of time" mean in this context when time is a feature of the universe we inhabit? Your whole post makes it seem like there is a grander, more absolute notion of time that's independent of our universe.

Incredibly lazy headline, actually. The article doesn't say anything of the sort.

No physicist is going to say "oh the universe shouldn't exist" because it very obviously does - what they'll say is "we have eliminated another possibility for the matter/antimatter imbalance".

When theory does not agree with observation, you need a new theory.

This is probably getting some physicists very excited, it means there may be entirely new physics to discover here!

> No physicist is going to say "oh the universe shouldn't exist"

Read the quote from Christian Smorra in the 4th paragraph

> This is probably getting some physicists very excited, it means there may be entirely new physics to discover here!

The opposite. The measurement agrees with CPT symmetry. There's no hint of new physics.

It seems to me people over estimate the abilities of science. Obviously the conclusion “the universe shouldn’t exist” ought to be rejected as a naturalistic theory because the universe _does_ exist.

Nothing "should" exist because the chances are so remote that any particular specific instance of anything could be described as "should exist".

The sequence of events that resulted in my existence or your existence, scientifically, statistically, suggest that neither of us "should exist".

What's the percentage cut-off between "should" and "shouldn't"?

Don't you think that's exactly what the headline is trying to convey?

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