Related topics: cern · atoms · big bang · electrons · universe

Unraveling a mystery surrounding cosmic matter

Early in its history, shortly after the Big Bang, the universe was filled with equal amounts of matter and "antimatter"—particles that are matter counterparts but with opposite charge. But then, as space expanded, the universe ...

Researchers measure rare particle decay with high precision

At CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), studies of rare processes allow scientists to infer the presence of heavy particles, including undiscovered particles, that cannot be directly produced. Such particles are widely anticipated ...

Matter and antimatter seem to respond equally to gravity

As part of an experiment to measure—to an extremely precise degree—the charge-to-mass ratios of protons and antiprotons, the RIKEN-led BASE collaboration at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, has found that, within the uncertainty ...

AEgIS on track to test freefall of antimatter

It's a fundamental law of physics that even the most ardent science-phobe can define: matter falls down under gravity. But what about antimatter, which has the same mass but opposite electrical charge and spin? According ...

page 1 from 14

Antimatter

In particle physics, antimatter is the extension of the concept of the antiparticle to matter, where antimatter is composed of antiparticles in the same way that normal matter is composed of particles. For example, an antielectron (a positron, an electron with a positive charge) and an antiproton (a proton with a negative charge) could form an antihydrogen atom in the same way that an electron and a proton form a normal matter hydrogen atom. Furthermore, mixing matter and antimatter would lead to the annihilation of both in the same way that mixing antiparticles and particles does, thus giving rise to high-energy photons (gamma rays) or other particle–antiparticle pairs.

There is considerable speculation as to why the observable universe is apparently almost entirely matter, whether there exist other places that are almost entirely antimatter instead, and what might be possible if antimatter could be harnessed, but at this time the apparent asymmetry of matter and antimatter in the visible universe is one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics. The process by which this asymmetry between particles and antiparticles developed is called baryogenesis.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA