I Is Baryogenesis a Convincing Hypothesis?

[Morgo]

TL;DR Summary

Baryogenesis straw poll

Baryogenesis is a hypothesis. I'm curious as to how good an hypothesis it is generally considered? It states that anti-matter disappeared around the beginning of Universe formation, its not currently visible or apparently non detectable, so it must have gone.

Dark Matter is also not visible, and only vaguely detectable by gravitational proxy but it is considered 'still there'. Its location is uncertain, a locational uncertainty not allowed for in Baryogenesis.

How convincing is Baryogenesis then? I'm not particularly interested in debating it, its a hypothesis- its uncertainty is explicit, I'm only interested in a straw poll of its general consensus.

 

[Orodruin]

First of all, what you describe is not baryogenesis. It is the final stages of the anti-matter annihilating away with matter, leaving only the surplus of matter around. Baryogenesis as such is the generation of the asymmetry between matter and antimatter, for which we do not know which the correct mechanism is. It could be some form of baryogenesis, leptogenesis, or (rather unsatisfyingly) an initial condition of the Universe.

As for what you describe, the annihilation of matter and anti-matter, it is on a significantly stronger footing than whatever dark matter model one discusses. It is based solely on applying well-known and understood physics to the early Universe. When the Universe was much hotter than today, even with an asymmetry between matter and anti-matter of the correct size, the thermal equilibrium distributions of both would have been very very very similar. It is just standard physics.

Dark matter is tricker because we do not know the particular mechanism behind it and it interacts very much weaker than matter and anti-matter would interact.

The location of dark matter is also not uncertain. We know perfectly well where it needs to be. What we do not know is what it is made of. That is very different. In the case of anti-matter, we know what exact properties it needs to have.

 

[Orodruin]

And yes, there is scientific consensus about the annihilation of antimatter with matter. There really is nobody in the field that understands the mechanics behind (basic particle physics and thermodynamics) that doubts this. A straw poll on a random internet forum is not going to change this.

 

[Nugatory]

The question has been answered so this thread is closed.

As with all such thread closures we can reopen the thread if there is more to say on the subject and based on peer-reviewed publication - PM any mentor to ask.