The strong CP problem in physics.
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In physics, some processes and interactions preserve symmetry, meaning that their properties don’t change even if the same interactions/processes are done on their symmetrical counterpart. This may be hard to understand so let’s consider an example.
To understand this, consider someone throwing a spherical ball at your face. What if they flip the ball upside down and then throw it at you in the same manner i.e., at the same speed. Would the impact feel the same? I would say so because the ball is a sphere. Here, we can say that throwing a sphere at your face has an “upside down” symmetry.
“CP” is a combination of two types of symmetry, which are charge symmetry and parity symmetry. Charge symmetry is when things are the same when charge is set to opposite, such as from electron to positron. Parity symmetry is when things are the same when one of an object’s coordinates is flipped to an opposite sign, such as mirror image.
“Strong” refers to the strong interaction, which is one of the four fundamental forces, along with gravity, electromagnetic, and weak.
“Problem” refers to our current understanding in particle physics that there are currently no reason why CP symmetry should be preserved in strong interaction, and yet none of the experiments with strong interaction so far has shown any violations of CP symmetry. This implies that our current understanding of strong interaction may be flawed or incomplete.
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