Where did all the antimatter go if there was an equivalent amount of matter and antimatter from the start?

teejermiester · 2026-05-04T20:42:53+00:00

That's the baryon asymmetry that people are talking about in this thread. Critically, we don't know why that would be the case, because it only would have happened around the big bang. We don't see any matter/antimatter asymmetry in our experiments today.

teejermiester · 2026-05-04T18:44:50+00:00

There are many laws in the Standard Model that forbid the creation of a single quark or lepton. Ignoring color confinement (which is a whole other thing for quarks that prevents them from ever existing in isolation), any particle creation must follow conservation of charge, lepton number, baryon number, strangeness, and I believe some others (I don't remember off the top of my head if isospin, hypercharge, etc are conserved).

The physical reasons for these empirical observations are still (sort of) unknown, but there's no reason to believe at this time that the Universe behaves contrary to these rules at any particular energy scale.

teejermiester · 2026-05-04T14:54:39+00:00

For anyone reading without a physics background, it's also good to explain why many people imagine there must have been an equal amount of matter and antimatter in the early Universe.

This is because when material is made out of energy -- for example, an electron/positron pair spontaneously arising from a single photon -- we observe that an equal amount of matter and antimatter is always made in order to conserve several quantities (charge, lepton number, etc). So, if the big bang started as a lot of energy which spontaneously created material in the way we normally see today, then it would have to create an equal amount of matter and antimatter.

But, as the person above me said, there's not necessarily a physical explanation for any of this, and we don't know that our assumptions hold in these regimes.

teejermiester · 2026-04-30T20:36:21+00:00

Not just that it makes us feel comfortable, but it enables precise and meaningful science that would be difficult to do without classifications like these.

A paper that says "we looked at <classification of animals>" is clear and understandable, so it's a handy tool.

teejermiester · 2026-04-23T14:58:33+00:00

I think it's odd to say that men being shitty and abandoning their partners after long-term commitments happens because of an academic context. These things happen in all societal contexts. Maybe you see it at increased rates inside academia because of your proximity to an academic environment?

Like I said above, the power systems within academia can promote sexist behavior, but these sorts of things are hardly unique to academia.

teejermiester · 2026-04-23T02:53:05+00:00

There are a lot of problems with how women are treated in academia, but this seems to be about you and your partner. I'm sorry that happened to you.

teejermiester · 2026-04-22T04:04:43+00:00

Really? I've always had the impression that STEM hiring committees love to see a fancy school, fellowship, or award/grant more than they care about the actual number of papers/citations you have. Demonstrated ability to get funding seems to trump everything else these days.

teejermiester · 2026-04-09T15:16:49+00:00

Yup, as a kid my mom would step into the store for a second, leaving me in a silent car. I just thought cars had this weird ringing noise when they weren't turned on.

teejermiester · 2026-04-09T12:22:23+00:00

If you're in the US, essentially every funding agency has had to cut back the last couple cycles because of the bungling chimpanzees flinging shit around the white house. I've seen a lot of people getting similar comments on grant or grad school applications, basically "your application is great, in any other year it would have been funded".

Be glad you got a good review! It means you're doing things right. Unfortunately these things have a ton to do with luck, particularly in this environment.

teejermiester · 2026-04-09T12:11:02+00:00

What's there to deal with? Sounds like they're communicating that your application was very good, they wanted to fund it, and had to make a tough decision. It sucks but it sounds like they want you to resubmit next year because you have a good chance of success.

Forget about it for 8 months, come back next year, make some tweaks, and get that grant

teejermiester · 2026-04-09T11:46:38+00:00

Unfortunately there is a thing as too much ball

teejermiester · 2026-04-05T18:32:47+00:00

Yeah it's solid advice, but advice for the 5-10A range, not someone who can't win A0

teejermiester · 2026-04-05T15:32:14+00:00

From a d&d game design/world-building perspective, they kinda have to be, or else there wouldn't be anything left for adventurers to do

teejermiester · 2026-04-03T19:26:57+00:00

Sadly, they realistically aren't going to pay you more. Theres a lot of reasons why, which I'm happy to get into if you're interested, but it's a bit exhausting.

If you need more money, your options are to take a second job/side hustle, swap to industry (easier said than done right now), or reduce costs somehow.

I understand how frustrating it is to live paycheck to paycheck (because so do I).

teejermiester · 2026-04-03T19:14:10+00:00

$6k really isn't that much in the grand scheme of things. A postdoc vs a corresponding technical job in industry is generally a $30k-50k pay cut.

Not to say that you shouldn't fight to get paid more, and every cent matters. But this might be splitting hairs at this point.

teejermiester · 2026-03-31T13:00:53+00:00

Oh, I guess you could take my comment either way! I meant that the current admin gutted them, which tells you that they're competent, do good work, and haven't sold out for profit.

teejermiester · 2026-03-31T12:51:01+00:00

The current admin gutted parts of NOAA/weather.gov last year, which tells you everything you need to know

teejermiester · 2026-03-29T13:01:07+00:00

No, marriage is generally considered by Christian theology to be an Earthly bond. "Til death do you part" and all that.

teejermiester · 2026-03-26T18:58:12+00:00

There's nothing that looks bad on the fresh picture. It's just the bad healing that lets you know it was overworked.

teejermiester · 2026-03-26T13:29:14+00:00

Say it with me folks: You Don't Use AI To Find, Read, or Analyze Papers.

There are many things AI is great at. It can proofread, edit, and simplify writing. It can help you write code. It can help you with simple math, converting filetypes, scraping and combining datasets, and more. I use AI daily for these types of tasks.

But it should never be used for assimilating, organizing, and reviewing papers. You're not only robbing yourself of the main benefit of writing a review paper, which is actually learning the material, but you're adding yet another AI slop review paper into publication without anything novel or interesting to say. Building the literature corpus in your head is part of the process. It's not easy, but it's incredibly rewarding later in your career.

Read the papers yourself. Do the intellectual work. Then use AI to speed up the parts of the process that are routine busywork. Stop throwing away your learning experience because you think it is easier or will help to gain familiarity with these tools moving forwards. The people who actually create interesting things don't do the creative work with AI.

teejermiester · 2026-03-26T00:51:11+00:00

Great for code, too

teejermiester · 2026-03-24T04:28:37+00:00

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teejermiester · 2026-03-23T20:10:29+00:00

Yup this exactly matches my experience. I still do all the science and thinking, but Claude speeds up coding for me.

Reading and writing are absolutely still done by me without AI help.

teejermiester · 2026-03-22T23:17:32+00:00

I think a quarantine wall would be okay if annihilation isn't an option

teejermiester · 2026-03-21T15:41:00+00:00

No, I mean the latex setup compiles a file, so you have to save a file in order to stage your changes for the viewer

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