¿Por qué existimos? Grandes misterios de la ciencia
El descubrimiento de una sustancia en particular podría desentrañar todo el misterio de nuestra existencia. Cuando se creó el universo, la materia y una sustancia llamada antimateria deberían haberse anulado mutuamente. Pero eso no ocurrió. Si los científicos pueden descubrir los misterios de la antimateria, eso podría ayudarnos a comprender por qué hay vida en este planeta y posiblemente también en otros planetas. Pero tratar de estudiar la antimateria es una tarea diabólicamente difícil.
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00:00On August 2, 1932, the American physicist Carl Anderson took an extraordinary photograph.
00:14One that could reveal how the universe was born.
00:20If you're a particle physicist, this poster can't be missing from your wall at all times.
00:26What Anderson captured was antimatter.
00:31Antimatter is one of the greatest mysteries of the universe.
00:36Since its discovery, antimatter has only dissipated fleetingly.
00:48However, it is fundamental to our universe.
00:52It is impossible to find out how we got here without understanding antimatter.
01:00At the beginning of the universe, the same amount of antimatter and matter must have annihilated each other.
01:08We shouldn't exist.
01:12It doesn't make any sense.
01:15It's what makes you think. It can't be.
01:18Trying to figure out antimatter is like falling into a bottomless pit.
01:23It's literally a cosmic intrigue.
01:27Today, several rival experiments are accelerating to solve this mysterious paradox.
01:34Right now, we're in the only antimatter factory in the world.
01:39This is the only instrument in space of this type.
01:43Nobody thought it was possible.
01:46If we can find it, it will be in a crystal like this.
01:51Antimatter sounds like science fiction.
01:55But it's real.
01:57And if researchers can discover its secrets,
02:01maybe they can decipher one of the great mysteries of science.
02:05Why do we exist?
02:09I think we'll find the answer.
02:12But nature doesn't reveal its secrets just like that.
02:36This is the fun part.
02:38I love this road.
02:40And I love the way it curves.
02:42It's a pleasure to see the landscape passing by.
02:47Everything we see around us,
02:50from trees and mountains to stars and planets,
02:55contains particles of matter.
03:01But physicists like Michael Dosser are more interested in the opposite enigmatic of matter.
03:08His often misunderstood twin,
03:11antimatter.
03:14I've never touched it.
03:16I've never smelled it.
03:18But I've been working with it for 50 years.
03:22Oops, not 50, 40, but okay.
03:26Antimatter is slimy
03:29because it has a highly destructive characteristic.
03:33When an antimatter particle meets its opposite of matter,
03:38they annihilate each other,
03:42leaving only pure energy.
03:48And this disappearance makes it almost impossible to study antimatter.
03:54So for physicists like Michael,
03:57the first step is to make it exist again.
03:59If you want it, you have to create it.
04:02And this is one of the biggest challenges I can think of.
04:16These facilities are part of CERN,
04:19the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
04:23They are the only ones in the world.
04:26Here we do many unique things,
04:29but one of the most peculiar is that we create antimatter atoms.
04:33It's the only place in the world where this can happen.
04:37Michael and his team are creating antihydrogen atoms.
04:41We'd love to create all kinds of atoms,
04:44but in fact we're only able to create the simplest ones,
04:48the most simple ones.
04:50Anything more complex won't fall beyond our reach.
04:55Antihydrogen only has two ingredients.
05:00The first one is the antiproton.
05:05A large number of them are introduced
05:08almost at the speed of light.
05:11The second one is the proton.
05:14The third one is the antiproton.
05:16A large number of them are introduced
05:19almost at the speed of light in the factory.
05:24We start out with about 10 million antiprotons.
05:29Then a special decelerator
05:32reduces it to about 14 million kilometers per hour.
05:38For a particle physicist, that would be the speed of a peaton.
05:42The antiprotons that come out of the decelerator
05:46are barreled down this beam here
05:49that you can see going through our main apparatus.
05:53Then they add a second ingredient,
05:56the antielectrons.
05:59We shoot them down through this beam
06:02into the main apparatus,
06:05and in there the magic happens
06:08by combining the antiprotons trapped
06:10in the hydrogen.
06:13Everything happens in a flash of light.
06:16In a few thousand millionths of a second, everything is over.
06:20In a world made of matter,
06:23Michael takes the boundaries of science to the limit.
06:27The biggest challenge we face
06:30is making sure that those structures of antimatter
06:34that we're making remain in the apparatus without annihilating.
06:38At about 50 million dollars per nanogram,
06:42this team has created antihydrogen atoms.
06:50It's a great milestone. There's no doubt about that.
06:54We end up with an atom of antihydrogen per hour,
06:58but we expect to multiply that number by a thousand.
07:01And once you get to thousands of atoms per hour,
07:04things start to get interesting.
07:07These antiatoms, created at will,
07:10take science one step closer
07:13to revealing the secrets of our existence.
07:18In the future, we hope to be able to see
07:21a little cloud of antihydrogen atoms in a box.
07:26It will be a very nice ultraviolet dot.
07:37Investigating antimatter is extremely difficult,
07:44because when it meets matter,
07:47they annihilate each other.
07:50Today, researchers can create and capture
07:54the simplest antiatoms to try to reveal their secrets.
08:00But the disappearance of antimatter
08:03made it difficult to discover it.
08:07Antimatter is one of the greatest mysteries of the universe.
08:11Even if it doesn't keep you up all night,
08:14I can assure you that physicists do.
08:21The mystery of antimatter began in 1928,
08:25when a new mathematical equation predicted
08:28the existence of a mirror particle,
08:31identical to the one we know today.
08:33But with an opposite charge.
08:39No one took this peculiar calculation seriously
08:42until four years later.
08:53This is the first image of antimatter.
08:57This is the first proof that antimatter exists.
09:00This is the first proof that it exists,
09:03and not just the crazy idea or theory of someone.
09:10Dr. Carl Anderson, an American physicist,
09:13captured this incredible proof
09:16by analyzing the trajectories of cosmic rays.
09:19These are particles from the Sun,
09:22from the solar system, that hit the Earth.
09:25And here we see one of the particles
09:27passing through the detector.
09:30The particle looked like an electron,
09:33but when it passed through the magnetic field of the detector,
09:36it behaved in an unusual way.
09:41The strangest thing is that it was traveling
09:44in the wrong direction.
09:47An electron has a negative charge,
09:50so it should bend in this direction.
09:53But this particle doesn't. It bends in the opposite direction.
09:57This means that this particle has a positive charge.
10:00It's the antimatter version of the electron.
10:05Without this incredible image,
10:08antimatter could have returned to the shadows.
10:14If you're a particle physicist,
10:17this poster can't be missing from your wall
10:20to remind you that you not only need nice theories,
10:23but also experimental proofs to make progress.
10:25Here they are.
10:28As technology developed,
10:31progress came immediately.
10:35The University of California presents its new Bebatron,
10:39the most powerful particle accelerator.
10:42Physicists saw that antimatter not only had electrons.
10:49Other particles in matter also had an opposite in antimatter.
10:52This giant of 10,000 tons
10:55accelerates elementary particles of matter
10:58at the highest speed ever seen.
11:01Each discovery moved the scientific community.
11:07A new world of antimatter particles was discovered.
11:13But the existence of antimatter
11:16gave rise to a very disturbing enigma.
11:19It made us wonder
11:22what happened when our universe was born,
11:27and how the world we know is possible.
11:35More than 13 billion years ago,
11:38everything that exists in the universe today
11:42was formed in an extraordinary moment.
11:49This is the Big Bang.
11:52It's the very moment in which our universe was born.
11:57A huge power explosion
12:00that brought everything that exists into existence.
12:05But the early universe was very different
12:08from the one we live in today.
12:13There were no galaxies,
12:15there were no stars, there were not even atoms.
12:18If you go back in time to the Big Bang,
12:21we would only see the ingredients of atoms,
12:24elementary particles revolving at high speed.
12:29These elementary particles
12:32are the smallest bases in our universe.
12:39By the time the universe was created,
12:41these elementary particles started to gather
12:44in larger forms of matter.
12:49Later, atoms were formed,
12:52some 300,000 years later.
12:57After 200 million years,
13:00the first stars were born, and then the galaxies.
13:03And finally, we are here.
13:05But that's only part of the story.
13:08Because in the fleeting moments after the Big Bang,
13:11it is believed that there was the same amount of matter
13:14as antimatter.
13:20I have six silver balls representing matter.
13:26And six black balls representing matter.
13:29And six black balls representing matter.
13:32And six black balls representing antimatter.
13:40Scientists believe that the early universe
13:43was full of these particles,
13:46intertwined.
13:51But when they came in contact,
13:55the same amounts of matter and antimatter
13:58were annihilated,
14:01leaving behind a universe of pure energy.
14:09Well, as you can see, that's not the case.
14:12We're made of matter.
14:15Pretty much everything we see is made of matter.
14:18And that really makes you question what happened.
14:21Scientists believe that in that first second
14:24after the birth of the universe,
14:27something tilted the scale
14:29in favour of matter.
14:33But not by much.
14:36Just one extra particle of matter
14:39instead of antimatter,
14:42was all we needed
14:45to build the foundations of the stars and galaxies
14:48and the whole universe.
14:51We wouldn't be here
14:54if it wasn't for this one extra particle of matter.
14:56Something extraordinary.
15:03In 1932,
15:06an image changed our perception of the universe.
15:11It showed that antimatter exists.
15:17And it revealed a cosmic paradox.
15:22We shouldn't exist.
15:27Something must have happened
15:30for matter to dominate our universe.
15:34Today, several rival theories
15:37are trying to find out what happened.
15:42Finding answers will help us
15:45to answer one of the deepest questions that exists.
15:50Why do we exist?
15:57To investigate the mystery
16:00of what happened to antimatter
16:03in the early universe,
16:06a scientist searches among the smallest particles of matter.
16:11There aren't many lines of work
16:14in which you can ask repeatedly,
16:17like a child, why?
16:20Why do things happen the way they happen?
16:23How did we get here?
16:26He investigates these particles of matter,
16:29going back in time
16:32to the beginning.
16:36We're trying to go back to the conditions
16:39that could have occurred
16:42just after the birth of the universe and the Big Bang.
16:45In the first microseconds of the universe,
16:48there were only elementary particles.
16:52Mitesh believes that a family of particles,
16:54known as quarks,
16:57are a fundamental part of the puzzle.
17:00Quarks are really the bread and butter
17:03of the elementary particles.
17:06There's a saying, we're all made of star dust.
17:09Well, the star dust is made of quarks.
17:12That's where we should study matter and antimatter.
17:15Mitesh believes that there's a difference
17:18between the quarks of matter and their partners,
17:21the anti-quarks,
17:24in favor of matter in the early universe.
17:27In my opinion, there must have been
17:30a huge imbalance between the quarks.
17:33That would be the key to deciphering the anti-matter puzzle.
17:38At the height of the Big Bang,
17:41the quarks ended up trapped in larger particles.
17:44To investigate them, Mitesh must free them.
17:50100 meters underground,
17:52the LHCb experiment is in charge of it.
18:02It's a real paradox to be using
18:05this huge device, 20 meters long
18:08and three stories high,
18:11to look for one of the smallest things we know.
18:14This huge device makes protons collide
18:17at almost the speed of light.
18:20About 40 million times per second.
18:25It never will stop looking like magic
18:28that something like this could be done at all.
18:32The collisions create an environment
18:35similar to the Big Bang.
18:38An explosion of hundreds of elementary particles
18:41of matter and antimatter.
18:43Among the traces they leave,
18:46Mitesh looks for the differences
18:49between quarks and anti-quarks.
18:52But with hundreds of millions of particles to analyze,
18:55getting it is quite a challenge.
18:58The effects we're looking for are really small
19:01and we're looking for this in a set of data
19:04that is so large that it could sift out
19:07something as interesting as looking for
19:10one of the smallest particles possible.
19:13A needle in a hundred million birds.
19:18After decades of meticulously recording
19:21the behavior of quarks and anti-quarks,
19:24scientists like Mitesh get a better idea
19:27of how this imbalance could occur
19:30at the beginning of the universe.
19:33In this data we can see the difference
19:36between matter and antimatter.
19:39You see from the height of the two peaks
19:41the difference with your own eyes.
19:44So it's a very exciting result.
19:47Quarks and anti-quarks are different,
19:50but there is a problem.
19:53So while we have seen small differences
19:56between matter and antimatter,
19:59none would be able to explain
20:02the imbalance we see in the universe.
20:05There must be another piece of the puzzle
20:08hidden somewhere.
20:12I think the thing really important
20:15is to be tenacious to be able to stay
20:18in the crest of the wave
20:21trying to understand what is happening in reality.
20:27Quarks and anti-quarks are not so opposite.
20:33It's a promising proof.
20:37But researchers still don't know
20:39what it means.
20:42And a scientist tries to find the answer
20:45in outer space.
20:55When I was a child, I lived in China.
21:00I used to go at night with my grandmother
21:03to look at the stars.
21:06And we were always discussing
21:09what is out there.
21:16The Nobel Prize Sam Ting
21:19believes that the antimatter
21:22that was formed in the early universe
21:25can still be found.
21:28At the beginning, there must have been
21:31the same amount of matter as antimatter.
21:33The question is, where is
21:36that other half?
21:40This pioneering physicist is looking
21:43for that antimatter lost in the only place
21:46where he believes it can be found.
21:50We have to go to space
21:53to see whether there is antimatter or not.
21:56It's the only option.
21:59There is no other place.
22:0230 years ago, Sam specialized
22:05in the elementary particles
22:08found on Earth.
22:11I had a group collaborating with me.
22:14None of us had ever been in space.
22:17We started from nothing.
22:20From zero, we didn't know anything.
22:24This group of newbies
22:27came up with the idea of creating
22:29a special magnet designed
22:32to find antimatter in space.
22:35I was quite worried about how we would do it.
22:38Nobody had ever launched a magnet into space.
22:41Known as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer,
22:44or AMS,
22:47it was built for 15 years
22:50by hundreds of scientists from 16 different countries.
22:55It was a great effort.
23:00Endeavour will deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer,
23:03a particle detector designed
23:06to find unusual matter by measuring cosmic rays.
23:09In May 2011,
23:12the 7.5-ton antimatter detector
23:15and $2 billion
23:18was ready to take off.
23:21This brings back a lot of memories.
23:24Of the space station.
23:26The detector was on board
23:29of the space shuttle Endeavour.
23:32Its destination?
23:35The International Space Station.
23:38I was very nervous.
23:44Many of us spent a lot of time on it.
23:49We had done something
23:52that no one thought was possible.
23:54OK, Mark.
23:57All that's left is to wish Endeavour good luck and a happy journey.
24:00See you on June 1st.
24:033, 2, 1, zero.
24:06And liftoff for the final launch of Endeavour,
24:09expanding our knowledge and our lives in space.
24:15Rotating manoeuvre, Endeavour.
24:17400 kilometres above the Earth,
24:20in a feat of precision engineering,
24:23the detector has docked at the space station.
24:38In a short time,
24:41the signals began to go down,
24:44and we knew that everything was going to be fine.
24:47Everything worked.
24:50It was a relief.
24:58Since that day,
25:01the detector has been tracking antimatter in space.
25:06This is the space station.
25:09Every 93 minutes,
25:12it goes around the Earth.
25:15As the antimatter detector orbits the Earth,
25:18thousands of millions of cosmic rays pass through it.
25:23The red line is the cosmic rays.
25:27Since May 19th, 2011,
25:30so there are 191 billion.
25:34The data is collected day and night.
25:37You don't rest on Christmas,
25:40nor on Halloween.
25:44The trajectory of the cosmic rays
25:47through the magnetic detector defines their charge,
25:50and therefore, whether or not they are antimatter.
25:55Finding traces of antimatter in the immensity of the cosmos
25:58is extremely difficult.
26:05But seven years after the experiment,
26:08they captured a very intriguing signal.
26:11An antiatom.
26:15We found one, very clearly.
26:18Antihelium.
26:21The mass is identical to that of helium,
26:24but the charge is just the opposite.
26:28Finding antihelium among a billion particles
26:31could have been a mistake.
26:35And then, months later,
26:37the second one arrived.
26:40There were no other close signals.
26:43It was perfect.
26:46Finding an antihelium in space is surprising.
26:50It can't happen by normal cosmic ray collisions.
26:55It has to come from something unexpected.
27:04More tests are needed.
27:07But finding antihelium in space
27:10brings an amazing possibility.
27:15Maybe there are other complex structures of antimatter in the universe.
27:22There could be stars of antimatter waiting to be discovered.
27:29And if they are out there,
27:32there must be other kinds of antiatoms.
27:35Anticarbon, antioxygen.
27:38And then we will know more clearly
27:41that there is something totally different out there.
27:56Since the first photograph
27:59that showed the existence of antimatter,
28:01scientists have wondered
28:04why the universe we see is only made of matter.
28:08Some believe that the answer is hidden in the quarks.
28:13Others have built detectors
28:16to find clues in space.
28:19But none has solved the mystery
28:22of how matter came to predominate in our universe.
28:24So other researchers
28:27are looking for the secret of antimatter
28:30in even more mysterious places.
28:46We have been wondering how the universe was formed.
28:49And we have looked for the answer in several places.
28:51But we haven't found the one we need.
28:54So now we are looking for it in less studied places.
28:57We are going to have to look for it well.
29:00And look in the darkest and deepest corners, okay?
29:03Yes.
29:05And under each leaf.
29:07Yes, William and I.
29:09Yes, William and you together.
29:11Come on.
29:13Lindley Winslow believes that looking in these unexplored areas
29:16will decipher the enigma of antimatter.
29:19A lot of us have been looking for neutrinos.
29:22Neutrinos are one of the elementary particles,
29:25the most difficult to study.
29:28They are a little bit rebellious.
29:31It's hard to get them to understand.
29:34But like people, it makes them more interesting
29:37and it makes you want to study them.
29:40It makes you want to study them.
29:43It makes you want to study them.
29:45But like people, it makes them more interesting
29:48and it makes you want to study them and discover what they do.
29:51I know it's not easy.
29:54If it was, we would have done it already.
29:58Neutrinos are self-sufficient
30:01thanks to two crucial characteristics.
30:06They have no electric charge.
30:09And they have very little mass.
30:11For the most part, they go through everything without doing anything.
30:17And despite their antisocial tendencies,
30:20neutrinos are very abundant.
30:24Neutrinos are produced around us non-stop.
30:28There are many that are created in the sun.
30:31There are many that are created in supernovae,
30:34in the radiative disintegrations of the Earth's crust.
30:37We are surrounded, but we don't know it.
30:39Once created, these ghostly mini-particles
30:43are only known when they interact with matter.
30:48But that hardly ever happens.
30:52Throughout your life, a neutrino could interact with your body once.
30:57Finding an interaction with matter
31:00is a reward for any neutrino scientist.
31:03It's like looking for treasure.
31:06It's like looking for fairies in the garden.
31:10Everyone has a little bit of interaction,
31:13and it's our job to understand what they do in that interaction.
31:17I have one!
31:33Another neutrino hunter, Tepei Katori,
31:36is sure that the interaction between neutrinos
31:39and matter would help solve the enigma of antimatter.
31:45Seeing a lot of neutrinos interact
31:48is almost like winning the lottery.
31:51These unique attributes have revealed
31:54a unique and very peculiar behavior.
32:00Neutrinos can do extraordinary things,
32:04like oscillating neutrinos.
32:06The oscillation of neutrinos
32:09occurs when a neutrino changes between three varieties,
32:13or what scientists call flavors.
32:17It keeps changing.
32:20It's like oscillating between flavors.
32:23Only neutrinos can do that.
32:26A neutrino begins with a single flavor.
32:29But when it travels through space,
32:32it varies between three different flavors.
32:35Only when it rarely interacts with matter,
32:38does it settle in a final flavor.
32:46Tepei studies the theory that this change of flavor
32:49creates a crucial difference between matter and antimatter.
32:56I think that neutrinos could solve many doubts,
33:00including why in the universe there is no antimatter,
33:02only matter.
33:07To prove this theory,
33:10Tepei and a team of international scientists
33:13use a huge underground neutrino detector.
33:17The neutrino experiment is very difficult,
33:20and there are only a few developing in the world.
33:23So it is a great privilege to visit this place.
33:28The T2K experiment
33:30uses a huge cave full of water
33:33buried 1,000 meters underground in the center of Japan.
33:41Neutrino scientists call the boat a dream boat.
33:45Every neutrino scientist dreams of rowing this boat.
33:51In this picture, I'm not working.
33:54It's more like a selfie, because I think it's amazing.
34:01Everything in this 100-million-dollar golden chamber
34:05was designed to have more possibilities
34:08of capturing the valuable interactions with matter.
34:13Every second, concentrated nuclei
34:16of hundreds of billions of neutrinos are launched.
34:2250,000 tons of ultrapure water
34:25stop the neutrinos.
34:28Every interaction is seen as a flash of light
34:31and will be captured by one of the 13,000 sensors.
34:39The detectors are very sensitive.
34:42If you point a flashlight from the moon,
34:45you can see it from the ground.
34:48Tepei is part of the team that records
34:51and compares the flavor changes of neutrinos
34:54and their twins of antimatter,
34:57or neutrinos.
35:00Monitoring these rebel ghosts requires a lot of patience.
35:06We work 24 hours, 365 days a year.
35:09Well, not 24, I sleep sometimes.
35:12But if you're lucky, maybe one or two neutrinos
35:15will interact at some point.
35:20Finally, in 2020, after 10 long years of observation,
35:24Tepei and his team discovered something interesting.
35:27They discovered something important about neutrinos.
35:33We actually made the wrong conclusions
35:36that the oscillations of neutrinos
35:39and the oscillations of antineutrinos
35:42could be different.
35:45Although it is still provisional,
35:48the size of the oscillation is the largest seen
35:51between matter and antimatter particles.
35:54So neutrinos could be key
35:57to determining the predominance of matter in the universe.
36:01That's why it's so exciting.
36:09Some researchers believe
36:12that the curious oscillations of neutrinos
36:15are vital to uncover the mystery of antimatter.
36:19A huge detector has collected enough data
36:22to suggest that this ghostly mini-particle
36:24gave birth to the universe.
36:33But there is still the vital piece of the puzzle.
36:38One that could be in this little box.
36:50If neutrinos provoke
36:52the creation of more matter than antimatter,
36:55we need to find out how they do it.
37:03More and more scientists believe
37:06that it could be possible
37:09that neutrinos and antineutrinos are not different, but equal.
37:16Each particle is a neutrino
37:19and an antineutrino.
37:23And if we have been wrong all this time
37:26and what we call neutrinos and antineutrinos
37:29are the same particle,
37:32the neutrino would be its own antiparticle.
37:35If so, neutrinos could self-annihilate,
37:38altering the balance of matter and antimatter
37:41in the early universe.
37:49The most curious thing about this
37:52is that it could be a way of creating
37:55more matter than antimatter in the early universe.
37:59Everyone is looking for evidence
38:02of the annihilation of a neutrino and antineutrino,
38:05that this ghostly particle
38:08is also its own antiparticle.
38:12Lindley has deposited her hopes
38:15in the content of this little box.
38:18We handle it very carefully.
38:20It is wrapped in plastic so as not to dirty it.
38:23This $5,000 tellurium oxide cube
38:26could be the key to our universe.
38:33The possibilities in this 5x5 cm crystal
38:36are infinite.
38:41The crystal is promising
38:44because it has the unique ability
38:47to produce two neutrinos at the same time.
38:50Beta-double disintegration.
38:54In the beta-double disintegration,
38:57two neutrinos created together
39:00could annihilate each other.
39:05And this is what Lindley hopes to find.
39:09That neutrino has annihilated
39:12with the other neutrino,
39:15proving that the neutrino is its own antiparticle.
39:17We are looking for the absence of neutrinos.
39:21But it poses a great challenge.
39:24Beta-double disintegration is very unusual.
39:27It is the strangest process ever measured.
39:30And this annihilation has never been seen before.
39:36We are looking for something
39:39100 million times rarer
39:42than beta-double disintegration.
39:44These are very difficult experiments.
39:47It is what makes them fun.
39:51Five years ago, Lindley and his team
39:54buried 988 crystals at great depth.
40:00In the CUORE experiment,
40:03the crystals pile up in a tower
40:06and then cool down to temperatures
40:09of literally another world.
40:12This detector is so cold
40:15that it is the coldest cubic meter in this universe.
40:18These extreme temperatures
40:21are necessary to detect
40:24the characteristic sign of annihilation.
40:27We are looking for a slight rise in temperature.
40:30Less than a thousandth of a degree.
40:33If you blink, you lose it.
40:36Until that happens,
40:38all that remains is to wait.
40:41These experiments are marathons,
40:44not sprints.
40:47This is definitely a long-term effort.
40:53What exists is a conjecture.
40:56I think the neutrinos
40:59would be able to make it happen.
41:02Detecting annihilation
41:05would change the course of physics
41:08as we know it.
41:11If neutrinos can,
41:14if they are their own antiparticle,
41:17it would mean that a small particle,
41:20the smallest, saved the day.
41:23Which is great.
41:26Scientists from all over the world
41:29work on ingenious and million-dollar experiments
41:32to unveil the enigma of antimatter.
41:38Like launching a huge antimatter detector
41:41into space.
41:44Recreating moments of the Big Bang.
41:49And going after the impossible.
41:54But there could be an alternative
41:57to this gigantic technology.
42:01A scientist uses only a blackboard
42:04to unravel the most implausible possibility
42:06of all.
42:10A new universe.
42:14Time upside down
42:17and opposite reflections.
42:24Trying to figure out antimatter
42:27is like falling into a bottomless pit.
42:30It's literally a cosmic intrigue.
42:33The theoretical physicist Neal Turok
42:36is trying to find the irrefutable proof of antimatter.
42:39I don't think that we need another particle
42:42to help us figure out
42:45why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.
42:50Neal believes that the mystery of antimatter
42:53can be solved only with mathematics.
42:57Mathematics are the key.
43:00And ever since Galileo,
43:03we've been taking advantage of something very valuable.
43:06Nature.
43:10In 2018, Neal published an equation
43:13describing the Big Bang.
43:17Putting our feet up
43:20what we know about the universe.
43:24Surprisingly,
43:27the equation said that before the Big Bang
43:30there was an anti-universe.
43:37This anti-universe is equal to ours
43:40in every way.
43:43But it's made up of antimatter.
43:51And just like our universe,
43:54Neal's anti-universe
43:57has the same origin.
44:00Our theory can be described
44:03with a simple drawing.
44:06We are in the universe.
44:09This is our region in space.
44:12And as we go back in time,
44:15toward the Big Bang,
44:18where everything was compressed to the extreme,
44:21what we found in the equations
44:24is that we could travel back to the Big Bang
44:27and out the other side
44:30to find a universe full of antimatter.
44:33This antimatter universe
44:36has the same cosmic wonders as ours.
44:41The Earth, the stars, our sun.
44:44We'd find the Milky Way,
44:47the dwarf galaxies that surround it,
44:50everything we know.
44:53But with one difference.
44:56From our universe,
44:59time in the anti-universe
45:02would look the other way around.
45:05So imagine that the fried egg
45:08is the anti-universe.
45:11And let's see it the other way around
45:14to see where it comes from.
45:17The Big Bang is when the egg
45:20is once again whole.
45:22And now if we go to the other side
45:25of the Big Bang,
45:28there is the antimatter universe.
45:31So the anti-universe and our universe
45:34are connected through the Big Bang.
45:37According to Neil,
45:40the anti-universe precedes our universe.
45:43But they also coexist.
45:46It's the yin to our yang.
45:49And as we go back in time,
45:52if we follow the anti-universe
45:55through our universe,
45:58we can see two sides of the same coin.
46:01This anti-universe would contain
46:04an opposite of our antimatter.
46:07So whatever we're doing,
46:10there's somebody in the anti-universe
46:13doing the opposite.
46:16There's somebody now giving this interview
46:18the light going out from my face to the sky,
46:21and everything is happening in reverse.
46:24This reformulation has the power
46:27to change not only our perception
46:30of antimatter,
46:33but also of our place in the universe.
46:42Neil hopes that in the future
46:44properties of his anti-universe
46:47will be observed,
46:50demonstrating his theory.
46:54This will take time.
46:57And my hope is that in the next ten years,
47:00either the observations will back this theory,
47:04and it will be convincing,
47:07or it will be refuted.
47:10In which case, we'll be back to the starting point.
47:15THE ANTI-UNIVERSE
47:26Since 1932,
47:29when the first image of antimatter was captured,
47:32the mystery of why the universe is made of matter
47:35remains an enigma.
47:40The more you discover,
47:42the more you learn and the more questions you ask yourself.
47:45Physicists are used to
47:48hitting our heads against the wall,
47:51hoping that wall will give up.
47:56Unveiling the mystery of antimatter
47:59will reveal how we got here.
48:03Trying to understand the universe
48:06is something very human,
48:08and the reason for why the universe is the way it is.
48:14Several rival theories
48:17are getting closer and closer
48:20to an answer.
48:23For me, we're quite close to solving the enigma.
48:26I don't know if I'm optimistic.
48:30I think it's a very exciting time for this field.
48:35I don't know when the discovery will come.
48:38But I'm looking forward to it.
48:41One day, scientists will understand
48:44why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.
48:49And when that day comes,
48:52they will finally be able to solve the greatest mystery of science.
49:00Why do we exist?
49:04This is definitely a long-term effort.
49:08But the rewards are out of this world.