Technologies

Our universe isn’t supposed to exist — but we’re slowly learning why it does

Scientists test the strange phenomena of antimatter, using a rather musical experiment.

You’re probably familiar with the following story: 13.8 billion years ago, the Big Bang led to stars and galaxies, which led to planets and life, and eventually, to you and me. But there’s a glaring gap in this chronicle, an aperture so big, solving it would shake our knowledge of reality.

“If we pluck, in principle, the best physics theories … we would need to conclude that the universe, as we observe it, cannot exist,” said Stefan Ulmer, a physicist at the RIKEN-led Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment at the European Council for Nuclear Research.

But… here we are playing Wordle and paying taxes, so either our laws of physics are wrong or we’re missing massive pieces of the metaphysical puzzle.

Among the army of scientists looking for those pieces, Ulmer has spent years studying the seed of our universe’s existential crisis: antimatter. In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature, he reports an update: Antimatter doesn’t react to gravity any differently than normal matter does.

Don’t worry if that last bit completely flew over your head, it’ll all come together.

First, what is antimatter?

Everything from the sun to the device you’re reading this article on is made up of the normal matter we know and love, composed of atoms built with positive protons and negative electrons. The Big Bang gave rise to all this matter, and the rest is literally history.

Here’s the weird part: Our universe also holds a tiny amount of antimatter, composed of atoms built with negative protons and positive electrons. It’s like the Big Bang’s rebel child.

These two also have a rift. When they come into contact, they totally annihilate one another because of their opposite charges. Even when scientists create antimatter for experiments, the zippy particles must remain in a vacuum because an antimatter particle in a normal matter environment would immediately go “poof.”

This incompatibility dominoes down to a huge existential problem – and it’s not just that we can’t meet our antimatter counterpart someday without basically exploding.

There should’ve been a particle war

Physicists use two main frameworks in explaining particle behavior: the Standard Model of particle physics and relativistic quantum field theory. Each is super solid in its own right, and combining them leads to a perplexing outcome.

Matter and its arch nemesis are two sides of the same coin.

“The architecture of space and time basically implies that matter and antimatter are, in principle, exactly symmetric,” Ulmer said, “which means they have the same masses, they have opposite charges, opposite magnetic moments and so on and so forth.”

If that’s true, the Big Bang should’ve had a 50/50 chance of forming either one. And had a 50/50 distribution happened, antimatter and matter should’ve completely destroyed one another. (Remember the rift?) With such a particle war, the universe wouldn’t have any matter. Space wouldn’t hold a sun or an Earth, and would surely lack humanity. Only a leftover sort of energy would’ve lingered after the battle.

But the sun, Earth and humans exist.

For some reason, the universe exhibits several orders of magnitude more matter than antimatter, a cosmic riddle known as baryon asymmetry, the namesake of Ulmer’s laboratory. Did Big Bang-generated antimatter vanish? Was there never any to begin with?

“We do not understand the origin of matter and antimatter asymmetry,” Ulmer simply puts it.

The part where it comes together

Because the Standard Model’s prediction of a 50/50 matter-type distribution relies on the particles being exactly symmetrical, the mystery may finally be solved if we find a way to breach the presumed parallel.

“If, let’s say, the proton would be a bit heavier than the antiproton, that would immediately explain why there is more matter than antimatter,” Ulmer said. That’d pretty much elucidate why the universe exists.

Let’s return to Ulmer’s study results: Both matter and antimatter respond to gravity the same way, ruling out some options on the ledger of possible symmetry violations.

Ta-da, told you it’d come together.

A proton symphony

Ulmer’s experiment began with a fascinating device called a Penning trap, a small metal contraption that detects a particle’s cyclotron frequency, or frequency at which something moves in a magnetic field.

The researchers placed a lab-produced antiproton inside and measured its cyclotron frequency, then popped in a negatively charged hydrogen ion and measured the same parameter. (Ulmer used a negatively charged hydrogen ion, or atom with one proton and two electrons, as a normal matter representative because it matched the antiproton’s negative charge).

It’s easiest to think of the experiment in terms of music.

The Penning trap’s pickup system, Ulmer says, is akin to what’s in an electric guitar. “It’s, in that sense, a very musical experiment,” he explained, being a guitar player himself.

“The frequency range is a bit different, but we are listening to the sound of what does not exist in the universe,” he added. “With our current ability to listen, [matter and antimatter] sound identical.”

The particles play the same melody, if you will, which also means they have the same music notes. Aka, these particles’ cyclotron frequencies were the same, as were many of their resulting properties, such as charge-to-mass ratio. All of these similarities are now eliminated from the list of possible matter-antimatter symmetry violations.

Space as a laboratory

But the researchers’ ultimate goal was to use their cyclotron frequency data and see whether the antimatter song changes alongside adjustments in a gravitational field. Specifically, they tested whether Einstein’s weak equivalence principle – true for normal matter – works on antimatter.

Einstein’s principle states that any object in a gravitational field behaves independently of its intrinsic properties. For instance, a piano and a feather would fall to Earth with the same acceleration in the absence of external forces such as wind.

Intuitively, we might assume antimatter’s opposite charges would force it to “fall up,” or at least have some variation in behavior.

For this facet of the experiment, Ulmer took advantage of some cosmic lab equipment: the Earth and sun. “As the Earth is orbiting around the sun in an elliptical orbit,” Ulmer said, “the gravitational potential in our laboratory changes as a function of time.”

So, he and his research team measured the cyclotron frequencies, aka the melodies, of both the antiproton and negative hydrogen ions at different points in time. After 24,000 comparisons, they concluded both particle types reacted the same – with very, very high certainty.

Voila, Einstein’s principle works on antimatter. It does not, in fact, fall upward.

“We’ll continue making the microscope better and better to be sure,” Ulmer said, and “if we find something unexpected in these experiments, this would change our fundamental understanding of the laws of nature.”

Philosophical consequences of antimatter

For argument’s sake, let’s suppose someone finally finds a discrepancy between antimatter and matter. What might that mean for us?

Violating matter-antimatter symmetry would mean violating a larger phenomena called CPT invariance. C stands for charge, P for parity and T for time. In a nutshell, the rule states if any of these things were reversed, the universe would fundamentally remain the same. If time went backward instead of forward, if everything was left handed instead of right handed and, you guessed it, if all matter had the opposite charge, the world wouldn’t change.

If we were to find antimatter isn’t the same as normal matter, C would be violated. And if CPT invariance is violated, then causality, scientists say, may no longer hold. “I think this would maybe lead to a more philosophical change in our thinking,” Ulmer said. “Comparable to what happened in the 1920s when quantum mechanics was developed.”

Adding, “up to that point, people were thinking that everything is deterministic. In quantum theory, things cannot be deterministic by definition anymore – so this changes how people are understanding themselves.”

Even more baffling is the realization that because the universe appears to exist, we sort of already know antimatter is up to something. In a sense, we already know we’ll have to adjust our perspective of reality.

We’re just waiting for the right moment.

Technologies

Amodei’s AI Slowdown Could Reshape Anthropic’s Planned IPO

As Anthropic meets with prospective investors ahead of its potentially historic market debut, CEO Dario Amodei is pushing for a slowdown in AI.

Anthropic’s path to an IPO just became significantly more complex.

While the company behind Claude is meeting with potential investors ahead of its potentially landmark debut, co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei is advocating for a strategy that appears to contradict these ambitious plans: slowing down.

Anthropic, which was valued at $965 billion earlier this year, has confidentially filed its IPO prospectus and is widely expected to list its shares as soon as next month. At the same time, concerns about the power of advanced AI models have been growing, spilling into the mainstream as more researchers warn of potential threats of human extinction.

In this context, Amodei wrote an essay over the weekend urging the AI industry to slow the pace of model development, proposing a three-step plan to temper how quickly model capabilities improve without “sacrificing commercial advantage or the United States’ lead in AI.”

This is the latest challenge facing public market investors who are trying to determine what they’re willing to pay for a piece of a five-year-old company that’s already among the most valuable in the world and could seek a $2 trillion valuation in its IPO. Although Anthropic may have to accept a hit to revenue growth, some experts say an intentional slowdown could help Anthropic position itself as a responsible actor, avoid future liability and address the public backlash towards AI that’s been building across the country.

“I don’t know that investors are necessarily going to see it as a negative,” Gil Luria, an equity analyst at D.A. Davidson, said in an interview. “Unless the companies are genuine and say, ‘OK, we’re not going to IPO, we’re not going to use any more compute, we’re not going to train any more models.’ That’s not what they’re saying.”

Technologies

Iran Claims It Shot Down U.S. Advanced Drone Above Strait of Hormuz Amid Escalating Middle East Tensions

Iran says it shot down an advanced U.S. MQ‑1 drone over the Strait of Hormuz as tensions rise. The claim comes amid stalled diplomacy, renewed threats over oil control, and rising crude prices.

Iranian military announced it has destroyed an advanced American drone over the Strait of Hormuz, marking the latest exchange as Tehran and Washington trade warnings and strikes with no sign of de‑escalation. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Monday that its “new advanced aerospace defence system” intercepted and destroyed an advanced MQ‑1 drone in the Hormuz strait, without providing further details on the drone’s mission. The MQ‑1 is built by American defense contractor General Atomics and has historically been operated mainly by the U.S. Air Force and the CIA.

The incident follows a series of Iranian operations against U.S. unmanned naval systems in the Gulf, as the conflict, now in its seventh month, shows few signs of abating and diplomatic efforts over the strategic waterway remain stalled. On Sunday, President Donald Trump said the United States could continue its campaign against Iran and seize control of its oil, comparing the situation to the deal Washington reached with Venezuela earlier this year.

“We’ll ultimately get out (of the war), unless we decide to stay and keep the oil like Venezuela,” Trump said of the Iran conflict at the Irish Open golf championship in Ireland. He added that U.S. revenue from the Venezuela arrangement, which gave Washington access to roughly a fifth of Venezuela’s oil reserves, has “paid for the war many times.”

Under the August agreement, Venezuela ceded majority U.S. control of more than 65 billion barrels of oil reserves — more than double America’s own reserves — in exchange for $209 billion for Venezuela’s state treasury. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the deal would also bring close to $100 billion in private investment to reinvigorate the Venezuelan economy.

On Sunday, Trump said he expects the seven‑month Iran war to end this year, possibly after the November midterm elections, and insisted that gasoline prices would “drop like a rock” once it does. He said he would only make the “right deal,” adding that Tehran has been “calling constantly” for peace talks, a claim Iran has previously dismissed.

Stalled Hormuz talks

A meeting in Oman between Gulf countries and Iran to discuss possible agreements on the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway for global oil and gas flows, has been postponed, Omani foreign minister Badr Albusaidi said on X on Sunday, citing the need for “consensus.” Officials from Iran and Gulf nations had been expected to meet on Monday and sign an agreement establishing an Iran‑Oman shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz, though no direct talks between the U.S. and Iran were ongoing.

The Strait of Hormuz has been subjected to an Iranian and later U.S. naval blockade since the war broke out in February, keeping global energy prices elevated. A June accord between Washington and Tehran faltered over disagreements about the artery, and a recent offensive by Yemen’s Houthi rebels has given the Tehran‑aligned group leverage over a second critical waterway, the Bab el‑Mandeb.

Ships deemed non‑compliant are regularly targeted by Iranian strikes, while the U.S. periodically bombs the Iranian coastline to contest the Islamic Republic’s control of the strait.

Oil prices rose past $100 a barrel again for the first time since May and climbed further on Monday after Saudi Arabia shut a key East‑West energy pipeline following damage from Iraqi drones. U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures were up 2.3% to $102.39 per barrel. Brent crude, the international benchmark, traded 2.4% higher to $107.11 a barrel.

Technologies

OpenAI boss Sam Altman spells out how and why the AI industry wants to slow down: ‘We could lose control’

OpenAI’s chief has made comments detailing how AI safety frameworks and a slowdown could work, as the industry unites behind concerns.

OpenAI chief Sam Altman has made his most detailed comments yet on how artificial intelligence safety frameworks could work, after he joined Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and Elon Musk in calling for an industry slowdown over the weekend.

Safety concerns over the technology have hit fever pitch since an Anthropic researcher quit last week, warning that those building it believed that it could “kill us all by the end of the decade” and prompting other employees at the lab and rival OpenAI to warn of catastrophic risks.

AI bosses have since shown a rare display of unity, with both Altman and Musk on Saturday backing an essay from Amodei that urged AI companies to slow how quickly they improve their most advanced models.

AI stocks were down Monday as investors digested the comments. U.S. President Donald Trump dismissed the CEOs’ warning on Sunday, saying a slowdown was not needed and would jeopardize America’s lead in AI over China.

Sam Altman sets out 2 ways AI could go ‘very badly’

“We welcome a federal framework that sets consistent safety requirements for frontier AI,” Altman said in a post on X just after midnight on Monday, adding that “no amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness.”

Altman warned of two ways AI progress could go “very badly,” including losing “control of the future to AI” and too much power concentrating around a single person or company.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in Washington are scrambling to address calls for safeguards.

This all comes as Anthropic and OpenAI gear up for what’s expected to be historic initial public offerings. Altman ruled out going public in 2026 in an interview with Fortune published Saturday.

Amodei’s three-step proposal

Many AI safety fears revolve around models developing the ability to improve their own performance, a technique known as recursive self-improvement, or RSI.

“Since roughly this summer, AI has been advancing drastically faster, driven primarily by AI’s growing ability to build the next generation of AI,” said Amodei in his essay. “Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all.”

Amodei proposed a three-step plan aimed at tempering the pace of development without “sacrificing commercial advantage or the United States’ lead in AI.”

The plan involves each frontier AI company giving “employee-like access” to external evaluators — which he said Anthropic was committing to now. Amodei also called for frontier AI labs to establish common safety standards, limit the rate of unchecked AI progress and attempt to coordinate efforts globally.

On Saturday, Altman said in a brief X post he agreed with Amodei that AI companies should “pace the frontier.” He added that “committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same.”

“Consistent rules to manage frontier risk so that we can maximize the benefits are a good idea (and we are excited by ideas like independent auditors),” Altman said in his Monday post. But, he added, “When we talk about ‘pacing,’ we do not mean ‘stopping.’ Progress has been rapid and will continue to be.”

“Pacing will be well worth this cost; no amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness, or let capabilities get ahead of alignment and monitoring,” he concluded.

“Where we will need the help of our government is for international coordination. But first we should do what we can ourselves.”

International cooperation

Coordinating AI safety measures and an industry slowdown with rival AI developers in China will likely pose big challenges.

The U.S. and China remain locked in a battle for AI supremacy, with tensions ratcheting up as Chinese models have become more advanced and their global adoption grows.

Amodei said Sunday that the “toughest dilemma” about his proposal is what happens if adversarial nations choose not to do the same.

“The more long-term thing would be working together to put a speed limit on the rate of AI progress,” Amodei told CBS News’ “Sunday Morning.”

“I think that’s going to be very difficult because the incentives to pull ahead and the military advantage that you get from that are so large. And honestly, I don’t know if it’s possible, but we should try.”

The Anthropic CEO’s essay has drawn criticism in China, with the state-owned Global Times writing on Monday that “Amodei’s proposals seek to portray China’s legitimate development in AI as a threat and further fuel confrontation between China and the US in the field.”

China’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday that the CEOs’ comments were “fearmongering.”