The Stations of the Cross - Reflections on Jesus' Love

The Stations of the Cross - 

Reflections on Jesus' Love

The Stations of the Cross, sometimes called The Way of The Cross, is a meditative prayer based on the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. This devotion grew out of the custom of Holy Land pilgrims who retraced the last steps of Jesus on his way to Calvary. These early Christians marked significant places along the way of Jesus so that others could follow. These places became the Stations of the Cross. In the 17th century, churches placed stations around the walls to commemorate these events.

When praying the Stations of the Cross we pause at each station remembering all that Jesus did for us, and we reflect prayerfully on the scene depicted. We can pray alone or as a group, use our own heartfelt prayers or prayers written by various people throughout the centuries. This meditation helps us to deepen our commitment to follow Jesus, to reflect on his Suffering, Death, and Resurrection and his amazing love for us all.

The Stations of the Cross

• Jesus is condemned to death on the cross.
• Jesus accepts his cross.
• Jesus falls the first time.
• Jesus meets his sorrowful Mother.
• Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry his cross.
• Veronica wipes the face of Jesus.
• Jesus falls the second time.
• Jesus meets and speaks to the women of Jerusalem.
• Jesus falls the third time.
• Jesus is stripped of his garments.
• Jesus is nailed to the cross.
• Jesus dies on the cross.
• Jesus is taken down from the cross.
• Jesus is placed in the tomb.
• The Resurrection of the Lord.

The Stations of the Cross (Full Version)

March 13, 2012

This is the full length version of the Stations of the Cross.  Thanks to youtube they have allowed this full version to be broadcast without interruption.  It is the same as the broken up version showed on this network.  Please send this link out for Lent for others to experience.  Share the faith in a more intimate way by following Jesus Christ on the way to the cross.  This version is bound to move the hardest of hearts thanks to the Most Holy Spirit.

The Stations of the Cross with Father Reed

Mar 19, 2011

The Stations of the Cross (or Way of the Cross; in Latin, Via Crucis; also called the Via Dolorosa or Way of Sorrows, or simply, The Way) refers to the depiction of the final hours (or Passion) of Jesus, and the devotion commemorating the Passion. The tradition as chapel devotion began with St. Francis of Assisi and extended throughout the Roman Catholic Church in the medieval period. It is less often observed in the Anglican and Lutheran churches. It may be done at any time, but is most commonly done during the Season of Lent, especially on Good Friday and on Friday evenings during Lent.

The Stations of the Cross originated in pilgrimages to Jerusalem. A desire to reproduce the holy places in other lands seems to have manifested itself at quite an early date.

* * * * * * * *

THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS

article link

First Station

Jesus is Condemned to Death

We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You.

Because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.

O Jesus! So meek and uncomplaining, teach me resignation in trials.

Lord Jesus, help us walk in Your steps.

Second Station

Jesus Carries His Cross

We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You.

Because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.

O Jesus! This Cross should be mine, not Thine! My sins crucified Thee.

Lord Jesus, help us walk in Your steps.

Third Station

Jesus Falls the First Time

We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You.

Because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.

O Jesus! By this first fall, never let me fall into mortal sin.

Lord Jesus, help us walk in Your steps.

Fourth Station

Jesus Meets His Mother

We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You.

Because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.

O Jesus! May no human tie, however dear, keep me from following the road of the Cross.

Lord Jesus, help us walk in Your steps.

Fifth Station

Simon, the Cyrenean,

Helps Jesus Carry His Cross

We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You.

Because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.

Simon unwillingly assisted Thee; may I with patience suffer all for Thee.

Lord Jesus, help us walk in Your steps.

Sixth Station

Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus

We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You.

Because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.

O Jesus! Thou didst imprint Thy sacred features upon Veronica’s veil; stamp them also indelibly upon my heart.

Lord Jesus, help us walk in Your steps.

Seventh Station

Jesus Falls the Second Time

We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You.

Because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.

By Thy second fall, preserve me, dear Lord, from relapse into sin.

Lord Jesus, help us walk in Your steps.

Eighth Station

Jesus Consoles the Women of Jerusalem

We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You.

Because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.

My greatest consolation would be to hear Thee say: “Many sins are forgiven thee, because thou hast loved much.”

Lord Jesus, help us walk in Your steps.

Ninth Station

Jesus Falls the Third Time

We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You.

Because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.

O Jesus! When I am weary upon life’s long journey, be Thou my strength and my perseverance.

Lord Jesus, help us walk in Your steps.

Tenth Station

Jesus is Stripped of His Garments

We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You.

Because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.

My soul has been robbed of its robe of innocence; clothe me, dear Jesus, with the garb of penance and contrition.

Lord Jesus, help us walk in Your steps.

Eleventh Station

Jesus is Nailed to the Cross

We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You.

Because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.

Thou didst forgive Thy enemies; my God, teach me to forgive injuries and forget them.

Lord Jesus, help us walk in Your steps.

Twelfth Station

Jesus Dies on the Cross

We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You.

Because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.

Thou art dying, my Jesus, but Thy Sacred Heart still throbs with love for Thy sinful children.

Lord Jesus, help us walk in Your steps.

Thirteenth Station

Jesus is Taken Down from the Cross

We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You.

Because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.

Receive me into thy arms, O Sorrowful Mother, and obtain for me perfect contrition for my sins.

Lord Jesus, help us walk in Your steps.

Fourteenth Station

Jesus is Laid in the Tomb

We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You.

Because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.

When I receive Thee into my heart in Holy Communion, O Jesus, make it a fit abiding place for Thy adorable Body.

Lord Jesus, help us walk in Your steps.

Amen.

Prayers highlighted in bold in the "Short Way of the Cross" as used by The Franciscan Fathers on their Missions. The accompanying prayers are from traditional Stations of the Cross.

* * * * * * * *

“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Matthew 18: 20

Links to other videos:

ROSARIES:

• Pray the Holy Rosary: The Glorious Mysteries https://youtu.be/3UbhPm43h-c
• Pray the Holy Rosary: The Joyful Mysteries https://youtu.be/Au4_3TZ12uU
• Pray the Holy Rosary: The Luminous Mysteries https://youtu.be/soj1oAMo6bM
• Pray the Holy Rosary The Sorrowful Mysteries https://youtu.be/372YtaNXAWI ...

CHAPLETS:

• Pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy https://youtu.be/w6R-nWcZd8E
• Pray the Chaplet of Saint Joseph https://youtu.be/rl2qRISI6Co
• Pray the Chaplet of Saint Michael the Archangel https://youtu.be/rG_aqkTo75M
• Pray the Chaplet of the Seven Sorrows of Mary https://youtu.be/8PWDgzoYgdg
• Pray the Chaplet of the Two Hearts (Sacred Heart of Jesus + Immaculate Heart of Mary) https://youtu.be/doAWrP0DZfw ...

PRAYERS:

• Pray the Fifteen Saint Bridget Prayers https://youtu.be/nz9mshgqHLY
• Pray the Stations of the Cross: A Short Way of the Cross https://youtu.be/mVM0Mn0AgHw
• Prayer for the Sick https://youtu.be/tEEntBNiSIM
• Prayer to Our Mother of Compassion https://youtu.be/ZqJkyeN1Ln4
• Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel https://youtu.be/HCwynvLzDxA
• Coronavirus Pandemic Prayers to Our Lady for Protection by Pope Francis.
• (To be recited after praying the Rosary in May 2020 - https://youtu.be/tg2mzzE_YPM)

Jesus, Quantum Cosmology, the Church, and a few Verses

I'm doing a quick series on standard quantum cosmology as science understands it today. Though to the novice reader these series of articles may seem complicated, to the trained undergraduate in quantum physics they are all quite simple and simply stated.

In order for me to discuss a process-based metaphysical cosmology related to open and relational process theology, including process philosophy itself (ala Alfred North Whitehead and John Cobb), the physics of astronomy and cosmology must be considered (along with evolution or, what I like to call "quantum evolution," which I spoke to in the early years of this website through hundreds of articles but not recently except in general descriptive terms of processual (quantum) evolution, psychology, sociology, and ecology.)

The next two cosmology areas to be covered before I return to examining process theology via John Cobb's encapsulation of process philosophy and theology will be articles related to quantum gravity, our holographic universe and what process relational philosophy means for cosmic time and consciousness. More simply, without a relational creation (sic, universe), time and consciousness are not present; but with it, they are present as secondary affects/effects, more generally described in perhaps cosmic holographic terms rather than as psycho-illusionary terms by psychology, neurology, etc.

Lastly, by the additiin of these more recent article series I'd like to also update Relevancy22's exploration of space and time by covering local- and mega-clustering quantum cosmic bubbles (as different from, but likely, in working conjunction with, dark matter and dark energy). In this way, as readers and contemporary thinkers, we can better approach the subject areas of the bible, God, and generally, theology, with a more nuanced view than typically found in the traditional work-a-day pseudoscience view of the church.

Moreover, there is no reason to jettison one's faith unless one's faith has been built upon sand, and not rock. I find Greek Platonism and Aristotelianism quite unhelpful in grasping the earlier Hebraic faith grounded more in relationality, narrative, and organic thinking than in the ethreal metaphysical "substance" of organic things; or as expressed in "mind v matter, reductionary, mechanical thinking" of the Greeks up to today's modernistic thinking.

In comparison, process philosophy takes the past 2000 years (or more actually 4000 years in my mind) and moves the Semitic outlook forwards into today's contemporary organic worlds of processual societal structures, fluid quantum thinking, and the tech-cyberworlds to come.

Thus and thus, I write of a new kind of Christianity embracing a "post-evangelical, socially progressive, and non-literal bible." One which keeps to the ancient categories of literary nuances and genres, their cultural world views and ancient histories, etc... but not the wooden kind of thinking present in today's classically interpretive  evangelicalism when reading a bible skewed towards inorganic Hellenistic thought and enlightenment+modernistic modelism).

Reading Scripture requires a more organic philosophical foundation embraceing a more processually-rooted relational, and open-ended, contemporary eschatology pregnant with native possibilities and opportunities. A processual theology which can ably drive progressive church ministries, community outreach, and polyplural global missions.

Too, I much prefer to write to non-Christians; to non-dogmatic, open-minded, post-evangelic and progressively-minded Christians; to those seeking truer forms of transformative spirituality; and even agnostics and atheists than I do Bible-belt Christians who live inside of closed fictitious worlds filled with formulistic enlightenment thinking, and defensive dogmatic platforms. These earnest folk have not been given the tools to see God outside the theological boxes of their own construction. If they stumble into here we will welcome them. But my experience has been largely dismissal, silence, and hardened hearts to the biblical truths spoke here in non-traditional ways outside the church's conservative platforms.

I should also mention to those who approach God and faith in their own forms of atheism - as I had in years past when I wrote of these things - that atheism is far harder to prove than theism is to disprove. In fact, it is nearly an impossible task to prove atheism. The articles I've produced in the past have shown this argument in some detail. However, they most likely need updating, so if a reader or two are willing to review those 20 or so articles and add their own thoughts please link me to your text that I might review with you your proofs and qualify your thoughts before posting them here.

Finally, unless uncertainty and doubt are embraced, a growing Christian faith will surely lose its "saltiness" and become tasteless and bland. A strong faith, like science, must always test itself and be willing to be examined if it is to stay realistic and conversant with society. This doesn't dismiss the surety of one's faith laid down upon Jesus, but speaks to interpreting our faith so that the ancient teachings of Scripture are driven by God's love and not by our religious urges to make of God an image in our own likeness.

And unless new "wineskins" are brought forth to put the new wine of the Gospel in (sic, Jesus), the old wineskins will rip and tear apart losing all. This means to me that the faith I was raised in deserves to be kept (but its best parts that is) while the rest must be let go and replaced.

Relevancy22 is not creating a new wheel, it is dispensing with the old wooden wheels for the newer electromagnetic Torus wheels (or whatever). Wheels that will work better with today's 21st Century global religions and societies.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

April 5, 2022

Matt 5.13-20 NASB

13“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how [d]can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by people.

14“You are the light of the world. A city set on a [e]hill cannot be hidden; 15nor do people light a lamp and put it under a [f]basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16Your light must shine before people in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

17“Do not presume that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. 18For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not [g]the smallest letter or stroke of a letter shall pass from the Law, until all is accomplished! 19Therefore, whoever nullifies one of the least of these commandments, and teaches [h]others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever [i]keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

20“For I say to you that unless your righteousness far surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Matt 9.17 NASB

14Then the disciples of John *came to Him, asking, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?”

15And Jesus said to them, “The [j]attendants of the groom cannot mourn as long as the groom is with them, can they? But the days will come when the groom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.

16But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for [k]the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results.

17Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”

Addendum

I should mention that these old world maxims are given an escalational spin upwards when rereading them not as maxims but in terms of the person of Jesus and what his gospel of atonement and redemption means in relation to the Old Testament system of Law-keeping. Thus, Law v Grace as thematic types interplaying off each other from Genesis through Revelation.

Moreover, the true Abrahamic faith of the Hebrews was always grounded in faith and never law. Jewish Law then can be liken to the church's systems of confessional creeds, dogmas and rites today.

That is, we are fleshly, symbolic beings who will always need ways of encapsulating our faith and beliefs. The trick is to not let the latter usurp the former... for when it does, faith becomes mere religion and institutionalized beliefs cut off from its living, growing, suffering, dying faith to self and worldly needs.

The goal is love in all things.

Not religious rites of asceticism, monasticism, stoicism, hedonism, legalism, etc.

Love goes with what's there and uses selfless sacrificial serving people to be the hands, feet, mouths, and heart of God.

Jesus is God's love.

Jesus is God.

God is love.

Keep it simple.

Jesus was the true salt of God who returned God's lost love back to its covenanted forms found in Abraham. 

Jesus was the cloth patch that pulled away from the religious ritualism of his day which had lost God's love in its works-righteousness schemes and austere religious rites.

Jesus was (and is) the new wine of the gospel spilt in his blood on the cross which binds up the wounds of the harmed and suffering. Who replaces the good wine of mankind with the better wines of God.

Nay, these observations of Jesus were not simply culturally observed maxims. It was Jesus' way of saying, "Look, I'm here, the New Covenant of God walks in the flesh with man this day. 'See Me. Hear Me. Touch Me. I AM the God you seek. REJOICE!'"

R.E. Slater

April 5, 2022

Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) - Heaven on their Minds

(Carl Anderson) ENG Sub - A. Lloyd Webber

Dec 29, 2016

"Christ, I know you can't hear me"

Comparison (Jesus Christ Superstar)

posted: Apr 28, 2016

Full Film - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkEqYxe5MW4

Separate Video Clips with better resolution - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHJHf-0hVZA&list=PLKVcpqH4HjM0oatHl4XWYk3k6zBJVjYmk

youtube soundtrack

How Did The Matter In Our Universe Arise From Nothing?

On all scales in the Universe, from our local neighborhood to the interstellar medium to individual... [+] NASA, ESA, AND THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM (STSCI/AURA)

How Did The Matter In Our Universe Arise From Nothing?

article link

by Ethan Siegel, Senior Contributor

January 5, 2018

When you look out at the vastness of the Universe, at the planets, stars, galaxies, and all there is out there, one obvious question screams for an explanation: why is there something instead of nothing? The problem gets even worse when you consider the laws of physics governing our Universe, which appear to be completely symmetric between matter and antimatter. Yet as we look at what's out there, we find that all the stars and galaxies we see are made 100% of matter, with scarcely any antimatter at all. Clearly, we exist, as do the stars and galaxies we see, so something (or process) must have created more matter than antimatter, making the Universe we know possible. But how did it happen? It's one of the Universe's greatest mysteries, but one that we're closer than ever to solving.

The matter and energy content in the Universe at the present time (left) and at earlier times... [+] NASA, MODIFIED BY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS USER 老陳, MODIFIED FURTHER BY E. SIEGEL

Consider these two facts about the Universe, and how contradictory they are:

• Every interaction between particles that we’ve ever observed, at all energies, has never created or destroyed a single particle of matter without also creating or destroying an equal number of antimatter particles.

• When we look out at the Universe, at all the stars, galaxies, gas clouds, clusters, superclusters and largest-scale structures everywhere, everything appears to be made of matter and not antimatter.

It seems like an impossibility. On one hand, there is no known way, given the particles and their interactions in the Universe, to make more matter than antimatter. On the other hand, everything we see is definitely made of matter and not antimatter. Here's how we know.

The production of matter/antimatter pairs (left) from pure energy is a completely reversible... [+] DMITRI POGOSYAN / UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA

Whenever and wherever antimatter and matter meet in the Universe, there’s a fantastic outburst of energy due to particle-antiparticle annihilation. We actually observe this annihilation in some locations, but only around hyper-energetic sources that produce matter and antimatter in equal amounts, like around massive black holes. When the antimatter runs into matter in the Universe, it produces gamma rays of very specific frequencies, which we can then detect. The interstellar and intergalactic medium is full of material, and the complete lack of these gamma rays is a strong signal that there aren't large amounts of antimatter particles flying around anywhere, since that matter/antimatter signature would show up.

Whether in clusters, galaxies, our own stellar neighborhood or our Solar System, we have tremendous... [+] GARY STEIGMAN, 2008, VIA HTTP://ARXIV.ORG/ABS/0808.1122

• In our own galaxy’s interstellar medium, the mean lifetime would be on the order of about 300 years, which is tiny compared to the age of our galaxy! This constraint tells us that, at least within the Milky Way, the amount of antimatter that’s allowed to be mixed in with the matter we observe is at most 1 part in 1,000,000,000,000,000!

• On larger scales — of galaxies and galaxy clusters, for example — the constraints are less stringent but still very strong. With observations spanning from just a few million light-years away to over three billion light-years distant, we’ve observed a dearth of the X-rays and gamma rays we’d expect from matter-antimatter annihilation. What we’ve seen is that even on large, cosmological scales, 99.999%+ of what exists in our Universe is definitely matter (like us) and not antimatter.

This is the reflection nebula IC 2631, as imaged by the MPG/ESO 2.2-m telescope. Whether within our... [+] ESO

So somehow, even though we aren't entirely sure how, [the universe] had to have created more matter than antimatter in it's past. Which is made even more confusing by the fact that the symmetry between matter and antimatter, in terms of particle physics, is even more explicit than you might think. For example:

• every time we create a quark, we also create an antiquark,
• every time a quark is destroyed, an antiquark is also destroyed,
• every time we create-or-destroy a lepton, we also create-or-destroy an antilepton from the same lepton family, and
• every time a quark-or-lepton experiences an interaction, collision or decay, the total net number of quarks and leptons at the end of the reaction (quarks minus antiquarks, leptons minus antileptons) is the same at the end as it was at the beginning.

The only way we’ve ever made more (or less) matter in the Universe has been to also make more (or less) antimatter in an equal amount.

The particles and antiparticles of the Standard Model obey all sorts of conservation laws, but there... [+] E. SIEGEL / BEYOND THE GALAXY

But we know that it must be possible; the only question is how it happened. In the late 1960s, physicist Andrei Sakharov identified three conditions necessary for baryogenesis, or the creation of more baryons (protons and neutrons) than anti-baryons. They are as follows:

• The Universe must be an out-of-equilibrium system.

• It must exhibit C- and CP-violation.

• There must be baryon-number-violating interactions.

The first one is easy, because an expanding, cooling Universe with unstable particles (and/or antiparticles) in it is, by definition, out of equilibrium.

The second one is easy, too, since "C" symmetry (replacing particles with antiparticles) and "CP" symmetry (replacing particles with mirror-reflected antiparticles) are both violated in the weak interactions.

A normal meson spins counterclockwise about its North Pole and then decays with an electron being... [+] E. SIEGEL / BEYOND THE GALAXY

That leaves the question of how to violate baryon number.

In the Standard Model of particle physics, despite the observed conservation of baryon number, there isn't an explicit conservation law for either that or lepton number (where a lepton is a particle like an electron or a neutrino). Instead, it's only the difference between baryons and leptons, B - L, that's conserved. So under the right circumstances, you can not only make extra protons, you can make the electrons you need to go with them.

What those circumstances are is still a mystery, however. In the early stages of the Universe, we fully expect equal amounts of matter and antimatter to exist, with very high speeds and energies.

At the high temperatures achieved in the very young Universe, not only can particles and photons be... [+] BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY

As the Universe expands and cools, unstable particles, once created in great abundance, will decay. If the right conditions are met, they can lead to an excess of matter over antimatter, even where there was none initially. There three leading possibilities for how this excess of matter over antimatter could have emerged:

• New physics at the electroweak scale could greatly enhances the amount of C- and CP-violation in the Universe, leading to an asymmetry between matter and antimatter. Sphaleron interactions, which violate B and L individually (but conserve B - L) can then generate the right amounts of baryons and leptons. This could occur either without supersymmetry or with supersymmetry, depending on the mechanism.

• New neutrino physics at high energies, of which we have a tremendous hint, could create a fundamental lepton asymmetry early on: leptogenesis. The sphalerons, which conserve B - L, would then use that lepton asymmetry to generate a baryon asymmetry.

• Or, GUT-scale baryogenesis, where new physics (and new particles) are found to exist at the grand unification scale, where the electroweak force unifies with the strong force.

These scenarios all have some elements in common, so let's walk through the last one, just as an example, to see what could have happened.

In addition to the other particles in the Universe, if the idea of a Grand Unified Theory applies to... [+] E. SIEGEL / BEYOND THE GALAXY

If grand unification is true, then there ought to be new, super-heavy particles, called X and Y, which have both baryon-like and lepton-like properties. There also ought to be their antimatter counterparts: anti-X and anti-Y, with the opposite B - L numbers and the opposite charges, but the same mass and lifetime. These particle-antiparticle pairs can be created in great abundance at high enough energies, and then will decay at later times.

So your Universe can be filled with them, and then they'll decay. If you have C- and CP-violation, however, then it's possible that there are slight differences between how the particles and antiparticles (X/Y vs. anti-X/anti-Y) decay.

If we allow X and Y particles to decay into the quarks and lepton combinations shown, their... [+] E. SIEGEL / BEYOND THE GALAXY

If your X-particle has two pathways: decaying into two up quarks or an anti-down quark and a positron, then the anti-X has to have two corresponding pathways: two anti-up quarks or a down quark and an electron. Notice that the X has B - L of two-thirds in both cases, while the anti-X has negative two-thirds.

It's similar for the Y/anti-Y particles. But there is one important difference that's allowed with C- and CP-violation: the X could be more likely to decay into two up quarks than the anti-X is to decay into two anti-up quarks, while the anti-X could be more likely to decay into a down quark and an electron than the X is to decay into an anti-down quark and a positron.

If you have enough X/anti-X and Y/anti-Y pairs, and they decay in this allowed fashion, you can easily make an excess of baryons over antibaryons (and leptons over anti-leptons) where there was none previously.

If the particles decayed away according to the mechanism described above, we would be left with an... [+] E. SIEGEL / BEYOND THE GALAXY

In other words, you can start with a completely symmetric Universe, one that obeys all the known laws of physics and that spontaneously creates matter-and-antimatter only in equal-and-opposite pairs, and wind up with an excess of matter over antimatter in the end. We have multiple possible pathways to success, but it's very likely that nature only needed one of them to give us our Universe.

The fact that we exist and are made of matter is indisputable; the question of why our Universe contains something (matter) instead of nothing (from an equal mix of matter and antimatter) is one that must have an answer.

In this century, advances in precision electroweak testing, collider technology, and experiments probing particle physics beyond the Standard Model may reveal exactly how it happened. And when it does, one of the greatest mysteries in all of existence will finally have a solution.

Two Short Courses in "Matter - Antimatter"

ANTIMATTER

https://www.lhc-closer.es/taking_a_closer_look_at_lhc/0.antimatter

In the late 1920's Paul Dirac applied to quantum mechanics the ideas of Einstein's special theory of relativity. It followed from Dirac's equations that there must be states of negative energy.

Dirac suggested that a deficiency of an electron in one of these states would be equivalent to a short-lived positively charged particle, or a positron with the same mass as the electron, but intrinsically opposite in terms of electrical charge. In ordinary matter, a positron would rapidly encounter an electron and annihilate, resulting in a very short lifetime for it, but in a perfect vacuum a positron can live forever.

Actually, for every matter particle there corresponds an anti-matter particle. Anti-matter particles can correspond to matter particles in every respect except that any kind of charge (or quantum characteristic) is opposite.

When a particle and an anti-particle meet, they annihilate into pure energy and may give rise to energetic neutral force-carrier particles, such as gluons, photons or Z-bosons. Conversely, energetic force-carrier particles can give rise to matter particle/anti-particle pairs (pair production).

An unsolved mystery of cosmology is why the universe is dominated by matter rather than anti-matter. That's just what the LHCb experiment see violation CP).aims to find out.

The experimental High Energy Physics Group at the University of Santiago de Compostela (SPAIN) focuses its research activity in quark physics, trying to probe the limits of the Standard Model. The main current project is Flavour Physics and CP-violation at the LHCb experiment at CERN

The first ever creation of atoms of antimatter at CERN has opened the door to the systematic exploration of the anti world. The recipe for anti-hydrogen is very simple - take one antiproton, bring up one anti-electron, and put the latter into orbit around the former - but it is very difficult to carry out as antiparticles do not naturally exist on earth. They can only be created in the laboratory. In even rarer cases, the positron's velocity was sufficiently close to the velocity of the antiproton for the two particles to join - creating an atom of anti-hydrogen

Three quarters of our universe is hydrogen and much of what we have learned about it has been found by studying ordinary hydrogen. If the behaviour of anti-hydrogen differed even in the tiniest detail from that of ordinary hydrogen, physicists would have to rethink or abandon many of the established ideas on the symmetry between matter and antimatter. It is believed that antimatter "works" under gravity in the same way as matter, but if nature has chosen otherwise, we must find out how and why.

The next step is to check whether anti-hydrogen does indeed "work" just as well as ordinary hydrogen. Comparisons can be made with tremendous accuracy, as high as one part in a million trillion, and even an asymmetry on this tiny scale would have enormous consequences for our understanding of the universe. To check for such an asymmetry would mean holding the anti-atoms still, for seconds, minutes, days or weeks. The techniques needed to store antimatter are under intense development at CERN.

* * * * * * * *

Ask Ethan: What's So 'Anti' About Antimatter?

by Ethan Siegel

Senior Contributor

High-energy collisions of particles can create matter-antimatter pairs or photons, while... [+] FERMILAB

For every particle of matter that's known to exist in the Universe, there's an antimatter counterpart. Antimatter has many of the same properties as normal matter, including the types of interaction it undergoes, its mass, the magnitude of its electric charge, and so on. But there are a few fundamental differences as well. Yet two things are certain about matter-antimatter interactions:

(1) if you collide a matter particle with an antimatter counterpart, they both immediately annihilate away to pure energy, and

(2) if you undergo any interaction in the Universe that creates a matter particle, you must also create its antimatter counterpart.

So what makes antimatter so "anti," anyway? That's what Robert Nagle wants to know, as he asks:

On a fundamental level, what is the difference between matter and its counterpart antimatter? Is there some sort of intrinsic property that causes a particle to be matter or antimatter? Is there some intrinsic property (like spin) that distinguishes quarks and antiquarks? What what puts the 'anti' in anti matter?

To understand the answer, we need to take a look at all the particles (and antiparticles) that exist.

The particles and antiparticles of the Standard Model obey all sorts of conservation laws, but there... [+] E. SIEGEL / BEYOND THE GALAXY

This is the Standard Model of elementary particles: the full suite of discovered particles in the known Universe. There are generally two classes of these particles:

(1) the bosons, which have integer spins (..., -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, ...) and are neither matter nor antimatter, and

(2) the fermions, which have half-integer spins (..., -3/2, -1/2, +1/2, +3/2, ...) and must either be "matter-type" or "antimatter-type" particles.

For any particle you can think about creating, there are going to be a slew of inherent properties to it, defined by what we call quantum numbers. For an individual particle in isolation, this includes a number of traits you're likely familiar with, as well as some that you may not be familiar with.

These possible configurations for an electron in a hydrogen atom are extraordinarily different from... [+] POORLENO / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The easy ones are things like mass and electric charge.

An electron, for example, has a rest mass of 9.11 × 10-31 kg, and an electric charge of -1.6 × 10-19 C. Electrons can also bind together with protons to produce a hydrogen atom, with a series of spectral lines and emission/absorption features based on the electromagnetic force between them.

Electrons have a spin of either +1/2 or -1/2, a lepton number of +1, and a lepton family number of +1 for the first (electron) of the three (electron, mu, tau) lepton families. (We're going to ignore numbers like weak isospin and weak hypercharge, for simplicity.)

Given these properties of an electron, we can ask ourselves what the antimatter counterpart of the electron would need to look like, based on the rules governing elementary particles.

In a simple hydrogen atom a single electron orbits a single proton. In an antihydrogen atom a single... [+] LAWRENCE BERKELEY LABS

The magnitudes of all the quantum numbers must remain the same. But for antiparticles, the signs of these quantum numbers must be reversed. For an anti-electron, that means it should have the following quantum numbers [remember, mass stays the same but electrical charge reverses]:

• a rest mass of 9.11 × 10-31 kg,
• an electric charge of +1.6 × 10-19 C,
• a spin of (respectively) either -1/2 or +1/2,
• a lepton number of -1,
• and a lepton family number of -1 for the first (electron) lepton family.

And when you bind it together with an antiproton, it should produce exactly the same series of spectral lines and emission/absorption features that the electron/proton system produced.

Electron transitions in the hydrogen atom, along with the wavelengths of the resultant photons... [+] WIKIMEDIA COMMONS USERS SZDORI AND ORANGEDOG

All of these facts have been verified experimentally. The particle matching this exact description of the anti-electron is the particle known as a positron [a positive antielectron]. The reason why this is necessary comes when you consider how you make matter and antimatter: you typically make them from nothing. Which is to say, if you collide two particles together at a high enough energy, you can often create an extra "particle-antiparticle" pair out of the excess energy (from Einstein's E = mc2), which conserves energy.

Whenever you collide a particle with its antiparticle, it can annihilate away into pure energy. This... [+] ANDREW DENISZCZYC, 2017

But you don't just need to conserve energy; there are a slew of quantum numbers you also have to conserve! And these include all of the following:

• electric charge,
• angular momentum (which combines "spin" and "orbital" angular momentum; for individual, unbound particles, that's only "spin"),
• lepton number,
• baryon number,
• lepton family number,
• and color charge.

Of these intrinsic properties, there are two that define you as either "matter" or "antimatter," and those are "baryon number" and "lepton number."

In the early Universe, the full suite of particles and their antimatter particles were... [+] E. SIEGEL / BEYOND THE GALAXY

If either of those numbers are positive, you're matter. That's why quarks (which each have baryon number of +1/3), electrons, muons, taus, and neutrinos (which each have lepton number of +1) are all matter, while antiquarks, positrons, anti-muons, anti-taus, and anti-neutrinos are all antimatter. These are all the fermions and antifermions, and every fermion is a matter particle while every antifermion is an antimatter particle.

The particles of the standard model, with masses (in MeV) in the upper right. The Fermions make up... [+] WIKIMEDIA COMMONS USER MISSMJ, PBS NOVA, FERMILAB, OFFICE OF SCIENCE, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, PARTICLE DATA GROUP

But there are also the bosons. There are gluons which have for their antiparticles the gluons of the opposite color combinations; there is the W+ which is the antiparticle of the W- (with opposite electric charge), and there are the Z0, the Higgs boson, and the photon, which are their own antiparticles.

However, bosons are neither matter nor antimatter. Without a lepton number or baryon number, these particles may have electric charges, color charges, spins, etc., but no one can rightfully call themselves either "matter" or "antimatter" and their antiparticle counterpart the other one. In this case, bosons are simply bosons, and if they have no charges, then they're simply their own antiparticles.

On all scales in the Universe, from our local neighborhood to the interstellar medium to individual... [+] NASA, ESA, AND THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM (STSCI/AURA)

So what puts the "anti" in antimatter? If you're an individual particle, then your antiparticle is the same mass as you with all the opposite conserved quantum numbers: it's the particle that's capable of annihilating with you back to pure energy if ever the two of you meet.

• But if you want to be matter, you need to have either positive baryon or positive lepton number;

• if you want to be antimatter, you must have either negative baryon or negative lepton number.

Beyond that, there's no known fundamental reason for our Universe to have favored matter over antimatter; we still don't know how that symmetry was broken. (Although we have ideas.) If things had turned out differently, we'd probably call whatever we were made of "matter" and its opposite "antimatter," but who gets which name is completely arbitrary. As in all things, the [our] Universe is biased towards the survivors.