Antimatter is a substance composed of antiparticles, which have the same mass as particles of ordinary matter but opposite charges, as well as other particle properties like spin and magnetic moment. When a particle and its antiparticle meet, they annihilate each other, releasing energy in the form of radiation, typically gamma rays. This annihilation process makes antimatter extremely interesting both theoretically and practically. It has important applications in medical imaging, specifically in positron emission tomography (PET) scans, where a positron (the antiparticle of the electron) is emitted and subsequently annihilates with an electron, helping to produce detailed images of internal bodily structures. Theoretical and experimental studies of antimatter also provide significant insights into the fundamental symmetries of the universe and help test predictions of the Standard Model of particle physics. The production and study of antimatter are challenging due to its tendency to annihilate upon contact with matter, requiring sophisticated techniques to create and trap antimatter particles without them coming into contact with normal matter.
Researchers successfully cooled positronium atoms, significantly impacting antimatter research and enabling new experiments in quantum electrodynamics and the potential for an antimatter Bose-Einstein condensate. The…
Landmark CERN experiment may help explain why antimatter seemingly lost out in the early universe. If you dropped antimatter, would it fall down or up?…
Experiment at CERN eliminates the possibility that antimatter is repulsed by gravity. CERN’s ALPHA collaboration has experimentally confirmed that antihydrogen is pulled down by gravity,…
A recent study, which holds significant implications for addressing one of the most important unresolved questions in physics—the disparity between matter and antimatter in the…
JILA physicists make record-breaking measurement of a key electron property. In the first moments of our universe, countless numbers of protons, neutrons, and electrons formed…
Parity symmetry violation detected in the orientation of galactic formations could explain the abundance of matter. For generations, physicists were confident that the laws of…
Physicists invoke the cosmological collider to demonstrate why matter, not antimatter, dominates the universe. The universe was filled with equal numbers of matter and “antimatter” –…
Are there anti-stars around us? Answer from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. What if some of the antimatter that was thought to have disappeared was…
A team of scientists at CERN led by MPQ physicist Masaki Hori discovered that a hybrid antimatter-matter atom behaves in an unexpected way when immersed…
The device hopes to answer the ultimate existential questions. The final piece of an all-new detector has completed the first leg of its journey toward…
Recently at the Quark Matter conference and before that at the Rencontres de Moriond conference, the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) collaboration presented an analysis of…
A city-sized collapsed star has generated a beam of matter and antimatter that stretches for trillions of miles. Data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory revealed…
The result may open doors to several lines of research in particle physics and beyond. A hybrid matter–antimatter helium atom containing an antiproton, the proton’s…
New results from the LHCb experiment on CP asymmetry in charmless three-body charged B meson decays include the largest CP asymmetry ever observed. CP asymmetry…
Astronomers have imaged a beam of matter and antimatter that is 40 trillion miles long with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The record-breaking beam is powered…
Cosmic physics mimicked on table-top as graphene enables Schwinger effect. Researchers at The University of Manchester have succeeded in observing the so-called Schwinger effect, an…
Quarks and Antiquarks at High Momentum Shake the Foundations of Visible Matter Jefferson Lab and Fermilab experiments present new results on nucleon structure. Two independent…
Collisions of Light Produce Matter and Antimatter From Pure Energy Study demonstrates a long-predicted process for generating matter directly from light — plus evidence that…