A New Result From ALPHA Once you’ve trapped antihydrogen what do you do? You measure it! That’s just what we’ve done. Published in Nature, we report the first resonant quantum transitions in antihydrogen atoms. We’ve used microwave radiation to change the internal state of the atom, from one which can be kept in our trap,… [Read more…]
January 27, 2012
The question of whether normal matter’s shadowy counterpart anti-matter exerts a kind of “anti-gravity” is set to be answered, according to a new report. Normal matter attracts all other matter in the Universe, but it remains unclear if anti-matter attracts or repels it. A team reporting in Physics Review Letters says it has prepared stable pairs of… [Read more…]
September 13, 2011
By finding a clever way to use the Earth itself as a scientific instrument, members of a SLAC-led research team turned the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope into a positron detector – and confirmed a startling discovery from 2009 that found an excess of these antimatter particles in cosmic rays, a possible sign of dark matter…..… [Read more…]
August 19, 2011
A belt of antimatter has been discovered circling the Earth, which in future could be used to fuel voyages that race at breakneck speeds to other planets in the Solar System. Antimatter has properties that are opposite those of normal matter – for example the positive charge on a proton is negative in an antiproton.… [Read more…]
July 28, 2011
By Hamish Johnston For something that is rare in the universe, antimatter has certainly been in the news a lot lately. The latest breakthrough involves antiprotonic helium and is published in Nature today. This exotic “atom” is formed when one electron in a helium atom is replaced with an antiproton, which is negatively charged. For two decades… [Read more…]
July 15, 2011
According to the conclusions of a new study, it would appear that the gigantic mass our galaxy has may contribute to underlying the asymmetry in decay rates between matter and antimatter. This phenomenon, called charge-parity (C-P) violation, has remained mysterious for years. The Milky Way has a tremendously large mass, accounted for by both normal,… [Read more…]
July 6, 2011
WHY the universe is filled with matter rather than antimatter is one of the great mysteries in physics. Now we are a step closer to understanding it, thanks to an experiment which creates more matter than antimatter, just like the early universe did. Our best understanding of the building blocks of matter and the forces… [Read more…]
July 2, 2011
US particle physicists are inching closer to determining why the Universe exists in its current form, made overwhelmingly of matter. Physics suggests equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been made in the Big Bang. In 2010, researchers at the Tevatron accelerator claimed preliminary results showing a small excess of matter over antimatter as… [Read more…]
June 7, 2011
The news that scientists can capture and store antimatter could have a profound effect on our understanding of the universe, says Tom Chivers. Sixteen minutes is not a particularly long time. It’s enough time for a cup of tea, or to run two miles, if you’re in good shape. But if you have a few… [Read more…]
June 6, 2011
Scientists have successfully stored anti-matter – the mysterious substance used as a weapon of mass destruction in the novels of Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown. Researchers at CERN, home of the Large Hadron Collider, had bottled antimatter back in 2010, keeping hold of the atoms for a fraction of a second. But CERN have now… [Read more…]
May 17, 2011
Cosmic ray detector blasts off on space shuttle AAn instrument for detecting cosmic rays – and possibly even dark matter – has finally been lifted into orbit on board the space shuttle Endeavour. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), which is the brainchild of the Nobel-prize-winning physicist Samuel Ting, will soon be installed on the International… [Read more…]
May 3, 2011
..from Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus (ALPHA) Atoms made of a particle and an antiparticle are unstable, usually surviving less than a microsecond. Antihydrogen, made entirely of antiparticles, is believed to be stable, and it is this longevity that holds the promise of precision studies of matter-antimatter symmetry. We have recently demonstrated trapping of antihydrogen atoms by releasing them… [Read more…]
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March 8, 2012
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