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

Zelle App Is Gone. Use These Alternatives to Send Money Digitally

You still have lots of free ways to send money to friends and family electronically.

If Zelle has been your go-to app for sending money digitally, it’s time to find a new method. The digital payment app shut down on April 1.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use Zelle altogether, however. Zelle has only discontinued its standalone app. You can still send money using Zelle if your bank belongs to the Zelle network. You’ll just need to do it through your bank’s app or website. You also have other services to choose from. Here’s what you need to know about this change and your options moving forward.

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Why the Zelle app is shutting down

When Zelle launched in 2017, only about 60 US financial institutions offered the service by the end of that year. Today, that number exceeds 2,200. As a result, less than 2% of Zelle transactions occur through the standalone app. Zelle has been phasing out the ability to make transactions on its mobile app since October 2024.

«Today, the vast majority of people using Zelle to send money use it through their financial institution’s mobile app or online banking experience, and we believe this is the best place for Zelle transactions to occur,» Zelle said in an October 2024 press release.

In December, Zelle was in the spotlight when the Consumer Financial Protected Bureau sued the company and three of the largest US banks for failing to protect consumers from widespread fraud on the peer-to-peer payment network. The lawsuit has since been dropped.

Other ways to send money digitally

You can still use Zelle through your bank’s app or website if it belongs to the Zelle network. You can also switch to another digital payment app, such as:

Apple Wallet
Cash App
PayPal
Venmo

Take some basic precautions when using Zelle or any other digital payment service. These apps are a frequent target for scammers, and Chase Bank has started blocking some Zelle payments it believes could be fraudulent. Only send money to people you know and trust, and watch for red flags like an urgent message claiming to be from your bank or an online ad for concert tickets that seem impossibly cheap.

Technologies

Marvel Rivals Season 2 Starts Next Week, Devs Drop Big News

Emma Frost and Ultron are joining the Rivals roster in season 2, and developers are upping the pace to one new hero per month starting with season 3.

After surviving the endless night in New York City with the Fantastic Four, Marvel Rivals players are getting invited to the shores of Krakoa for the start of season 2 on April 11. The game dropped the first trailer for the new season, giving us our first official look at the new heroes, and a developer vision video dropped major news about the future of hero releases.

The trailer features the former foe and sometimes-leader of the X-Men, Emma Frost, inviting people from across Rivals’ various timelines to the mutant nation of Krakoa, where everyone gets dressed up for a fancy gala — even Wolverine puts on a white tux. The event, however, is unceremoniously interrupted when Ultron shows up preaching extermination.

We also got a look at some of the cosmetics in season 2, though it’s unclear which are from the shop and which might be in the battle pass. In addition to the dressed-up Wolverine, we also got looks at Magik and Psylocke in the traditional X-Men blue and yellow. Nonmutant guests are also getting in on the fun, with fancy attire for heroes like Cap, Widow and Luna Snow.

New Heroes and balance changes in Marvel Rivals Season 2

Emma Frost joins the roster as a Vanguard. We don’t have detailed information about her abilities yet but expect that information to drop ahead of next week’s season launch. Ultron is coming in the season 2.5 update, which should be in late May.

Some team-ups are changing in season 2, including three new team-up abilities that were previewed in the newest developer vision video.

Emma Frost allows Magneto and Psylocke to create illusions of themselves.
Doctor Strange teams up with Scarlet Witch allowing her to use small portals to seemingly increase her damage output via a rapid-shooting alternate fire.
Cap finally teams up with Bucky, allowing the Winter Soldier to leap to allies.

A few existing team-ups are getting adjustments, with Psylocke, Winter Soldier and Doctor Strange being removed from older team-ups in favor of new ones, and Namor moving from working with Luna’s anchor to Hulk’s to empower his ultimate with gamma energy. Two team-ups are being removed entirely: Magneto can no longer team up with Scarlet Witch, and Thor is no longer anchoring Cap and Storm.

The developers vaguely teased other balance changes, including buffs to Peni, Mister Fantastic and Moon Knight, with Strange trading offensive pressure for more survivability and Rocket getting more utility while Loki and Adam Warlock receive nerfs to their Regeneration Domain and Soul Bond abilities.

Future seasons will be shorter, which means more new heroes

One of the most surprising moments in the developer video was the announcement that, beginning with season 3, seasons will be two months long instead of roughly three. There has been a lot of discussion online about whether Rivals’ pace of new heroes (about eight per year based on three-month seasons) was sustainable. Well, apparently the Rivals devs took that personally and are cranking up that pace to a new hero every month, meaning 12 new heroes per year.

This feels borderline ludicrous compared with other hero shooters that average about three new heroes per year, or even MOBAs like League of Legends, which has averaged about four new champions per year over the past five years. Rivals benefits from having an overflowing stable of Marvel characters to pull from rather than inventing their own hero concepts, and compared with Overwatch, the developers seem less worried about mechanical overlap in their heroes, as seen with many support ultimates. Still, a new hero every month feels unheard of for a hero shooter.

New Krakoa map and competitive changes

A new Krakoa-themed domination map is being added in season 2, and Yggsgard: Royal Palace (domination) and Tokyo 2099: Shin-Shibuya (convergence) will rotate out of the map pool for ranked modes, though they’ll still be available in quick play and custom games.

The threshold for competitive picks and bans, which currently only happen in diamond-ranked lobbies, will be lowered to gold 3. Players in Eternity or One Above All ranks will only be able to duo queue, instead of queuing with larger groups — a measure that’s likely intended to keep high-level teams from stomping lobbies.

Speaking of ranks, season 2 will drop everyone by 9 divisions, which is equal to 3 ranks. That means players in Eternity will drop to diamond, and any players at platinum 3 or below will start their climb from bronze 3 again. (AGAIN… AGAIN.)

Rivals developers also announced that individual player performance will be weighted higher when determining competitive progress after a match, meaning if your stats outperform your team’s, you’ll earn more for winning and drop less for losing. This change can help elevate smurfs and other high-skill players in lower-ranked lobbies by getting them into their appropriate ranks faster. However, it can also lead to players stat-farming, instead of playing in a way that is most effective for winning games. Overall, given that Rivals doesn’t use any sort of competitive placement matches, this should be a net positive for the game.

Other announcements

Rivals is adding new skin recolors to certain hero skins and (finally) giving players the option to gift costumes to their friends so they can surprise someone for their birthday, which you definitely did not forget about.

Missions are changing a bit, with the addition of weekly missions and a redistribution of where battle-pass-progressing chrono tokens are earned. The devs framed this as creating a «smoother expectation» of how to earn chrono tokens, but the surface-level description sounds like they’re just making it harder to earn battle pass progress over the season by tucking away more progress under missions with shorter time limits.

The developer vision update also gave us our first look at the competitive distribution, showing how many Rivals players are in each tier as of season 1.5.

The Hellfire Gala trailer says season 2 will start on April 11. While it doesn’t give a specific start time, expect the between-seasons maintenance to finish sometime in the middle of the night in the US.

For more on Marvel Rivals, check out which heroes and roles you should play and how to get free skins.

Technologies

Nintendo Switch 2 vs. Switch 1: Every Detail Compared

The Nintendo Switch 2’s official specs aren’t too different, but the new console has a lot of upgrades on the original Switch.

The Nintendo Switch 2 may look like its predecessor, but there’s been a lot of changes to its features and under the hood. The new console has «10x the graphics performance» compared to the original Switch, says Nvidia, which built the custom processor powering the Switch 2.

The Switch 2, with a release date on June 5, is priced at $450 alone or $500 in a bundle with Mario Kart World, the headliner of the console’s launch games. Here’s all the info on how to preorder the Switch 2.

Note that we’re mostly comparing the Switch 2 to the original Switch 1 released in March 2017, because looping in the Switch Lite and Switch OLED gets complicated.

Design

Broadly, the Switch 2 is a larger version of its predecessor, with everything looking slightly inflated: bigger footprint, bigger screen, bigger Joy-Cons.

Original Switch: The original Switch, with Joy-Cons slotted into the side rails, is a little over 9.4 inches wide, 4 inches tall, a little over half an inch thick and weighs about 10.5 ounces (297 grams). The Joy-Cons slide into place from the top of the device’s sides, while a thin wedge of plastic pops out of the back of the console to serve as a kickstand.

The Switch also came with a dock, which the console could slot into to for recharging and outputting to a TV or large display via HDMI port.

Switch 2: The new Switch 2 is bigger in every way, but it has the same overall shape and layout as the original. The new Joy-Cons will indeed be held in place on the console magnetically, and connect to the console via pins. The new console also sports a wide U-shaped kickstand that spans almost its entire rear width, which can be moved around to prop up the Switch 2 at a variety of angles. Nintendo says the console has more powerful speakers, which we’re looking forward to testing.

The Switch 2’s dock is largely similar in function though it has rounded edges and an internal fan to cool down the console during long game sessions. More importantly, it can output games in 4K to TVs, but only for select games.

Joy-Cons

The Joy-Cons were a marvel when they arrived on the first Switch, and while they’re functionally similar in its successor, there have been upgrades in the Switch 2’s controllers.

Original Switch: The Switch Joy-Cons are simple but powerful controllers that slid on and off the console via plastic rails, connecting and recharging via pins on the side. Detach and they become their own micro-controllers, with little shoulder buttons to boot.

Switch 2: The new console’s Joy-Cons are larger to fit the Switch 2, and lock into the side of the console via powerful magnets — there are small inward-facing buttons to the side of ZR and ZL to detach the controllers from the console. The larger-size Joy-Cons have longer L and R outside shoulder buttons, as well as much wider SL and SR internal shoulder buttons, which are accessible when detached from the console.

And yes, you can use the Switch 2 Joy-Cons as mice by placing their inner edges flat on a surface. During the Nintendo Direct, we saw it being used to control active action games like the wheelchair basketball-simulating DragXDrive and strategy games like Civilization VII.

Display size

Original Switch: The original Switch has a 6.2-inch LCD screen with 1,280×720-pixel resolution, which was reasonably impressive at launch in 2017 but has been outclassed by newer handhelds with sharper displays. The Switch OLED upgraded this with a larger 7-inch display showing deeper blacks and colors, but no upgrade in resolution. The Switch Lite has a 5.5-inch LCD screen.

Switch 2: Unsurprisingly, the Switch 2’s larger size means a larger display. The new console has a 7.9-inch 1080p LCD screen that can get up to 120Hz refresh rate in handheld mode, or up to 4K when docked and outputting to a TV.

Why no OLED display? Possibly to save on costs… or possibly to give Nintendo room to release a Switch 2 OLED version down the line.

CPU/GPU

Original Switch: The original Switch runs on an Nvidia custom Tegra X1 processor split into four ARM Cortex A57 CPU cores, and according to Hackaday, there are four extra A53 cores that aren’t used.

Switch 2: Once again, Nintendo hasn’t released any official info on the Switch 2’s specs, even after the Nintendo Direct reveal stream — and they most the company reveals is that it has a «custom processor made by Nvidia» on the Switch 2’s official specs page. Nvidia confirmed it also has a custom GPU, claiming that the new console has «10x the graphics performance» of the Switch 1, and the custom processor’s AI-powered features include Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), face tracking and background removal for video chat and real-time ray tracing.

We do still have more supposed details from previous leaks. Months ago on X (formerly Twitter), leaker Zuby_Tech posted that the Switch 2’s CPU will be an eight-core Arm Cortex A78C. They also suggested that the GPU will be an Nvidia T239 Ampere, aligning with years of similar rumors reported on by Eurogamer and others about the custom chip, which derives from Nvidia’s Tegra line of chips for smartphones and mobile devices.

RAM and storage

Original Switch. The Switch has 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 32GB of onboard storage, expandable up to 2TB via microSD cards in the slot beneath the kickstand.

Switch 2: Even after the reveal stream, Nintendo didn’t release official specs for RAM. Leaker Zuby_Tech posted on X back in September suggesting the Switch 2 will have 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB of onboard storage. That leak also suggested the new console will have two internal fans, up from the single one in the original Switch.

Nintendo did confirm that the new console will have 256GB of onboard storage, which can be expanded with special microSD Express cards — sorry, your old Switch-compatible microSD cards won’t work on the Switch 2.

Battery life

Original Switch: The original Switch packs a 4,310-mAh battery, which gives between 4.5 and 9 hours of battery life depending on screen brightness and other factors.

Switch 2: Though Nintendo didn’t release details on the Switch 2’s capacity in the reveal stream, the company does list specs on its website, showing it packs a 5,220mAh battery. While that’s notably larger than the one in its predecessor, Nintendo estimates this will only get players between an estimated 2 and 6.5 hours, depending on games played.

Ports

Original Switch: The first Switch sports a single USB-C port out the bottom, a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top and Wi-Fi 5 plus Bluetooth 4.1 connectivity. On the top is a slot at the top for Switch game cartridges as well as the microSD slot beneath the kickstand on the rear of the console.

Switch 2: The Switch 2 retains the original’s USB-C port on the bottom and 3.5mm jack on the top while adding another USB-C port topside, and now we know what it’s for: to connect with accessories like the Nintendo Switch Camera, a webcam-like camera on a stand to let you do Nintendo’s version of FaceTiming while you play games with your friends.

Nintendo hasn’t clarified the console’s connectivity options, and rumors are scarce on the subject.

As for cartridges, Switch 2 will play some original Switch games in physical versions. The cartridge slot is to the right of the headphone jack in the above image, which is where the slot is on the original Switch. You can tell game cartridges from the two console generations apart by color: ones for the new Switch 2 are red, while older Switch 1 games are black.