The universe seems to be left-handed, showing a fondness for
this direction in the way a particle spins as it decays. Scientists at CERN's
Large Hadron Collider (LHC) were looking at the behavior of a particular
particle, lambda b baryon, as it decayed via weak nuclear force, one of the
four major forces in the cosmos. The group, from the LHCb Collaboration, were actually
looking to find out how the weak force decays this particular particle into
lighter particles in order to get a better understanding of the behavior of
matter in the cosmos and also the nature of dark energy. Physicist Ulrik Egede,
from Imperial College London's Department of Physics, clarified the
'handedness' of the cosmos together with variances between matter and
antimatter is essential to understanding how the universe evolved.
In the past, researchers had proposed if right-handed quarks
were involved in decay too, this would propose other forces are at work in the cosmos
on top of the four vital forces in the universe i.e. electromagnetism, gravity,
weak nuclear, and strong nuclear force.
The results, issued in the journal Nature Physics, demonstrate
any new fundamental force that is right-handed is not involved in decay. Greig
Cowan, co-author on the research paper, said: "Our results show a clear
left-handed bias, which pulls us away from this line of enquiry and indicates
that we need to look elsewhere to answer these fundamental questions about the
universe."