Tuesday, June 23, 2015

WEEK 5 - JUST WHAT DOES THIS CP VIOLATION REALLY MEAN?

AS AN EXAMPLE OF CPT INVARIANCE, A NEGATIVELY CHARGED ELECTRON SPINNING COUNTER-CLOCKWISE TRAVELING FORWARD IN TIME MUST BE INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM AN ANTIELECTRON (POSITRON) SPINNING CLOCKWISE TRAVELING BACKWARD IN TIME.
ALTHOUGH THEY COULD NOT REVERSE TIME, THE PRINCETON EXPERIMENTERS COULD CHANGE (C) AND PARITY (P) OF THE PARTICLES IN THE KAON SYSTEM. TO EVERYONE'S AMAZEMENT, THE KAON'S DECAY RATE CHANGED UNDER THOSE OPERATIONS; CP WAS VIOLATED. THAT MEANT IN ORDER FOR CPT TO REMAIN INVARIANT, THE SYSTEM WOULD HAVE TO CHANGE IF TIME WERE RUN BACKWARD.

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