As I understood physics, I believed that the reason there is an asymmetry between matter and antimatter suggested there were violations in the CPT symmetry of the system. There was even evidence for this, by studying I think it was the Kaon particle, it's antipartner has a shorter life expectancy. However, watching a recent documentary, of the name I cannot remember now, Michio Kaku pretty much said that 'we wonder why there is no antimatter, the reason is because we are the leftovers.' So basically what Kaku is saying is what we see in the universe in the way of matter, is the leftovers that never got annihilated during the big bang. Two questions... is this new picture of the interaction commonly accepted? First I have never heard of there being a direct collision and we being the leftover material. Usually when we talk about matter and antimatter, we just take it as a certain it was created in equal amounts during the big bang. Another problem, there wasn't any matter during the big bang... matter and antimatter appeared quite late in the universes history. The universe began in a radiation epoch, then when geometry appears, matter appeared and presumably antimatter. So which picture do you think is right?
It is possible that we are the leftovers. Quite obvious an idea. Extending this idea, we could be the leftovers in our small region of the universe. Other distant regions in the universe could be dominated by antimatter. There could be anti-galaxies, with anti-stars, an anti-Earth, on which lives an anti-you! Just don't shake hands, you'll ANNIHILATE.
I guess the real question is, why didn't all the matter and antimatter annihilate? Spacetime too diluted perhaps for a full annihilation? I have never heard about us being the leftovers. Usually when physicists question the asymmetry, they took this as a proof of a violation, arguing if there was no such violation in CPT then all matter should have annihilated back to radiation, assuming both matter and antimatter was created equally.
The violation is CP, not CPT. The "leftover" assumption is that there was a difference in decay processes between high energy matter and antimatter, resulting in a surplus of matter throughout the universe.
Well the violation in T is in time, and the Kaon antiparticle lives longer than it's ordinary partner, so it can be a CPT violation.
The violation is in CP or T, not CPT. CPT means look at the process with all three mirrored, which means T is backwards in time.
Fair do's, all I was implying is that CPT as a whole needs to be taken into account, not just T. The Kaon particle example, was just that... an example.
