In a recent symposium on the latest breakthroughs in antimatter research, two main questions were prominent: how do we create new antimatter, and how can we store lots of existing antimatter? The questions arise from an oddity in our universe—the fact that it's overwhelmingly dominated by matter. Physicists believe that the Big Bang likely created equal amounts of matter and antimatter—there is a nice symmetry to that and physicists like symmetry. But our universe paints a different picture: matter obviously won out, even though matter and antimatter annihilate each other upon contact. Why?
To attempt to understand this question, scientists need to study antimatter. The need to see if it really has the properties our theories suggest it should have, and also to learn how it can interact with normal matter—it need not always result in an annihilation event. But, before any of this can happen, researchers must first make and store some antimatter.
Read the comments on this post
Avril Lavigne Bridget Moynahan Noureen DeWulf Nicollette Sheridan Amber Heard
No comments:
Post a Comment