Roughly a year ago, a paper came out describing some very strange atomic nuclei that had been produced at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, based at Brookhaven National Lab on Long Island. These atomic nuclei were not only comprised of antimatter, but some of their components incorporated strange quarks, instead of the usual up and down versions. The RHIC is back in the news today, as one of its detectors has found evidence of the production of anti-helium-4 nuclei. The rates at which these particles were produced, however, suggests that we won't be seeing anti-nuclei of any greater complexity anytime soon.
4He, also known as an alpha particle, is comprised of two protons and two neutrons, or four baryons in total. Antimatter versions of 3He were first detected decades ago, but the anti-alpha has been harder to identify. They're hard to spot in a particle collider simply because of the process by which they're formed. "A light nucleus emerging from a relativistic heavy-ion collision is produced during the last stage of the collision process," the authors state. "The quantum wavefunctions of the constituent nucleons, if close enough in momentum and coordinate space, will overlap to produce the nucleus."
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Kelly Rowland Danica Patrick Josie Maran Leighton Meester Dominique Swain
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