1964

CP violation

• Physicists thought elementary particles should be
• symmetrical. A particle and its antiparticle
• should have a opposite charges,
• and they should have opposite parity,
• so that their physical arrangements
• would be mirror images of each other.
• That is, it was thought that matter
• and antimatter should follow the same rules.
• Particles violate parity,
• known as the parity violation;
• therefore, physicists hoped
• they wouldn’t violate the product
• of charge conjugation symmetry
• and parity symmetry.
• If we considered more than one symmetry,
• maybe we could get back to where we were.
• However, James Cronin and Val Fitch
• studied the decays of neutral kaons and showed
• that the probability of a kaon transforming into its antikaon
• is different from the probability
• of an antikaon transforming into a kaon,
• so weak interactions violate P, C, and CP-symmetries.

Mirror images

• If the future were a mirror of the past,
• hey, we’re in trouble, mister.
• The farther we get from the past,
• the rosier it seems.
• The future reflects what we see around us,
• but we can’t step into it.

T violation

• If you think about time in spacial terms,
• you could think it travels in only one direction,
• but time is different from space. It’s
• not like width, breadth, or height except on a chart.
• There’s no way to travel to the future
• except the slow way, one millisecond at a time.
• When shit happens, it’s not beside,
• above, or below; it’s all over, then it’s over.