There is a lot of talk about physics lately as relating to matter and anti-matter. Scientists think when the universe first formed there was an equal amount of matter and anti-matter. This would make someone think what exists today shouldn’t, because matter and anti-matter are believed to eliminate each other. Scientists explain why this didn’t happen by saying something must have changed this so most of the antimatter would be eliminate and they now believe the Higgs bosan or God particle had something to do with this. They think they can prove this when the Large Hadron Collider goes back online this year. I wonder about all this because it seems to me to be another case of building a conclusion on a theory. Could there be other reasons why matter and anti-matter didn’t kill each other off? I would like to put forth some suggestions why this may not have happened.

The first suggestion has to do with the amount of anti-matter produced. Remember not one of us was around when matter and anti-matter was being produced so maybe we are wrong on the amount produced. Perhaps there was far more matter produced than anti-matter. Maybe we are wrong about anti-matter being around in the beginning, maybe it was formed later and therefore much less of it was made. Could it be something changed anti-matter into matter and we don’t know about that yet? Maybe anti-matter somehow annihilated itself. There are just so many things to consider besides what we are told. Maybe anti-matter ages somehow and becomes less volatile? Maybe there are other forms of anti-matter we don’t yet know about which react differently to things. I think we know far too little about this subject to know why the universe seems to have much less antimatter. We might just find it doesn’t and the bulk of the anti-matter is stored somewhere like inside giant black holes, if they actually exist.

If you are old enough you might remember those old science fiction movies of the 1960s where alien parasites take over human brains to make them do their bidding. Think this is farfetched? In a way this is happening now. A virus has been found which lives in lakes and which has infected some people and changed the way their brains operate. Researchers have found the virus was living in the mouths and throats of some people and is slowing some of their mental abilities. It is especially bad for visual information as it slows down the ability to process it. Scientists are finding out the billions of microorganisms which live inside our bodies may be responsible for the way we think and feel and could affect the way we deal with others. "We're really just starting to find out what some of these agents that we're carrying around might actually do," said a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Scientists found a virus in 40% of the thirty three people studied, the virus they found came from a lake and they were shocked it could infect humans. When the virus was injected into mice it changed thousands of their genes. Everyone tested was from Baltimore so the scientists don’t know if the same ratio exists in other parts of the country or even the world. This result would keep me from swimming in lakes, I don’t know about anyone else.

The hospital at Langley Air Force Base has become the first instillation to receive a new robot. This is no ordinary robot, it is a killer robot. This is not the type of robot one would see in the movie Terminator and it does not hurt humans, it helps them. The robot is equipped with a special device which allows it to pulse high-intensity, high-energy ultraviolet rays 25,000 times brighter than a florescent light. The effect of this is it splits open the cell walls of bacteria and kills the most dangerous pathogens found in hospitals. It is being said if you put the robot into a hospital room it will kill everything in it in five minutes. The robot’s name is Saul and it can even kill the Ebola virus. It is said to have an efficiency rate of over 99.9 percent. It has been tested in labs all over the world. Hospitals will be able to cut their infection rates by better than half if they use this robot and an official explained, “Hospitals that have used this have been able to bring infection rates down in many cases 60 percent.”

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider have reported finding two new particles which were predicted to exist. They are both baryons made from three quarks bound together by a strong force. I have to be honest, I laughed when I typed this explanation, because it will sound like gobbledygook to most of us, but there you are. I mention this because the same scientists think that discovering these new particles will help them understand more about the universe. Here is a strange piece of information, the particles are six times as massive as the protons the scientists use to crash into each other. The explanation for that is the particles spin in opposite directions which cause this.

The Higgs boson particle has been searched for, for years and was thought to be the fundamental particle. According to scientists who have published a paper on the subject this may not be the case. They are claiming the Higgs boson particle many not be a particle at all, but be composed of two even smaller particles. These particles they say would be techni-quarks bound by a theoretical “Technicolor” force. This reminds me of the Limbo when people sing how low can you go, only this time it is how small can you go. Protons and neutrons are made up of quark particles bound by the strong nuclear force. Some scientists do not agree with this, they say this new force could not exist and gravity, the electromagnetic force, the weak nuclear force nor the strong nuclear force are strong enough to hold these new particles together.

It will be at least a few years more before we know if there is a smaller particle than the Higgs boson. I think it is safe to say most scientists do not believe there is anything smaller, but this doesn’t mean they are right or wrong.