{"id":34720,"date":"2023-10-11T16:18:32","date_gmt":"2023-10-11T16:18:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/scientists-closer-to-solving-mystery-of-antimatter"},"modified":"2023-10-11T16:44:17","modified_gmt":"2023-10-11T16:44:17","slug":"scientists-closer-to-solving-mystery-of-antimatter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/scientists-closer-to-solving-mystery-of-antimatter","title":{"rendered":"Scientists closer to solving mystery of antimatter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Lesotho. <\/strong><\/span>Scientists have made a key discovery about antimatter \u2013 a mysterious substance which was plentiful when the Universe began. Antimatter is the opposite of matter, from which stars and planets are made.<\/p>\n

Both were created in equal amounts in the Big Bang which formed our Universe. While matter is everywhere, though, its opposite is now fiendishly hard to find.<\/p>\n

The latest study has discovered the two respond to gravity in the same way. For years, physicists have been scrambling to discover their differences and similarities, to explain how the Universe arose.<\/p>\n

Discovering that antimatter rose in response to gravity, instead of falling would have blown apart what we know about physics. They\u2019ve now confirmed for the first time that atoms of antimatter fall downwards.<\/p>\n

But far from being a scientific dead end this opens the doors to new experiments and theories. Does it fall at the same speed, for example? During the Big Bang, matter and antimatter should have combined and cancelled each other, leaving nothing but light.<\/p>\n

Why they didn\u2019t is one of physics\u2019 great mysteries and uncovering differences between the two is the key to solving it. Somehow matter overcame antimatter in those first moments of creation.<\/p>\n

How it responds to gravity, may hold the key, according to Dr Danielle Hodgkinson, a member of the research team at Cern in Switzerland, the world\u2019s largest particle physics laboratory.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t understand how our Universe came to be matter-dominated and so this is what motivates our experiments,\u201d she told me.<\/p>\n

Most antimatter exists only fleetingly in the Universe, for fractions of seconds. So to carry out experiments, the Cern team needed to make it in a stable and long-lasting form.<\/p>\n

Prof Jeffrey Hangst has spent thirty years building a facility to painstakingly construct thousands of atoms of antimatter from sub-atomic particles, trap them and then drop them.<\/p>\n

\u201cAntimatter is just the coolest, most mysterious stuff you can imagine,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as we understand, you could build a universe just like ours with you and me made of just antimatter,\u201d Prof Hangst told me.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s just inspiring to address; it\u2019s one of the most fundamental open questions about what this stuff is and how it behaves.<\/p>\n

\u201d What is antimatter? Let\u2019s start with what matter is: Everything in our world is made from it, from tiny particles called atoms.<\/p>\n

The simplest atom is hydrogen. It\u2019s what the Sun is mostly made from. A hydrogen atom is made up of a positively charged proton in the middle and negatively charged electron orbiting it.<\/p>\n

With antimatter, the electric charges are the other way round. Take antihydrogen, which is the antimatter version of hydrogen, used in the Cern experiments.<\/p>\n

It has a negatively charged proton (antiproton) in the middle and a positive version of the electron (positron) orbiting it. These antiprotons are produced by colliding particles together in Cern\u2019s accelerators.<\/p>\n

They arrive at the antimatter lab along pipes at speeds that are close to the speed of light. This is much too fast for them to be controlled by the researchers.<\/p>\n

The first step is to slow them down, which the researchers do by sending them around a ring. This draws out their energy, until they are moving at a more manageable pace.<\/p>\n

The antiprotons and positrons are then sent into a giant magnet, where they mix to form thousands of atoms of antihydrogen. The magnet creates a field, which traps the antihydrogen.<\/p>\n

If it were to touch the side of the container it would instantly be destroyed, because antimatter can\u2019t survive contact with our world. When the field is turned off the antihydrogen atoms are released. Sensors then detect whether they have fallen up or down.<\/p>\n

Some theorists have predicted that antimatter might fall up, though most, notably Albert Einstein in his General theory of Relativity more than a hundred years ago, say it should behave just like matter, and fall downwards.<\/p>\n

The researchers at Cern have now confirmed, with the greatest degree of certainty yet, that Einstein was right. But just because antimatter doesn\u2019t fall up, it doesn\u2019t mean that it falls down at exactly the same rate as matter.<\/p>\n

For the next steps in the research, the team are upgrading their experiment to make it more sensitive, to see if there is a slight difference in the rate at which antimatter falls.<\/p>\n

If so, it could answer one of the biggest questions of all, how the Universe came into existence. The results have been published in the journal Nature.<\/p>\n

For More News And Analysis About Lesotho<\/a> Follow Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Lesotho. Scientists have made a key discovery about antimatter \u2013 a mysterious substance which was plentiful when the Universe began. Antimatter is the opposite of matter, from which stars and planets are made. Both were created in equal amounts in the Big Bang which formed our Universe. While matter is everywhere, though, its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":34719,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[233,246,2096,245],"class_list":["post-34720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-miscellaneous","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-lesotho","tag-big-bang","tag-lesotho"],"yoast_head":"\nScientists closer to solving mystery of antimatter - Lesotho<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Scientists have made a key discovery about antimatter \u2013 a mysterious substance which was plentiful when the Universe beg ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/scientists-closer-to-solving-mystery-of-antimatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Scientists closer to solving mystery of antimatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Scientists have made a key discovery about antimatter \u2013 a mysterious substance which was plentiful when the Universe beg ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/scientists-closer-to-solving-mystery-of-antimatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lesotho\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-10-11T16:18:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-10-11T16:44:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/sites\/62\/2023\/10\/sm_1697029976.194778.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"802\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"446\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/scientists-closer-to-solving-mystery-of-antimatter#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/scientists-closer-to-solving-mystery-of-antimatter\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Scientists closer to solving mystery of antimatter\",\"datePublished\":\"2023-10-11T16:18:32+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-10-11T16:44:17+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/scientists-closer-to-solving-mystery-of-antimatter\"},\"wordCount\":780,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/scientists-closer-to-solving-mystery-of-antimatter#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/sites\/62\/2023\/10\/sm_1697029976.194778.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Lesotho\",\"Big Bang\",\"Lesotho\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"miscellaneous\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/scientists-closer-to-solving-mystery-of-antimatter#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/scientists-closer-to-solving-mystery-of-antimatter\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/scientists-closer-to-solving-mystery-of-antimatter\",\"name\":\"Scientists closer to solving mystery of antimatter - 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