Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

Jason Palmer the British Science and technology reporter for the BBC News has published an article titled ‘Antigravity gets first test at Cern’s Alpha experiment’, in which he states “Researchers at Cern in Switzerland have tested a novel way to find out if antimatter is the source of a force termed “antigravity”. Antimatter particles are the “mirror image” of normal matter, but with opposite electric charge. How antimatter responds to gravity remains a mystery, however; it may “fall up” rather than down. Now researchers reporting in Nature Communications have made strides toward finally resolving that notion. Antimatter presents one of the biggest mysteries in physics, in that equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been created at the Universe’s beginning. Yet when the two meet, they destroy each other in what is called annihilation, turning into pure light. Why the Universe we see today is made overwhelmingly of matter, with only tiny amounts of antimatter, has prompted a number of studies to try to find some difference between the two. Tests at Cern’s LHCb experiment and elsewhere, for example, have been looking for evidence that exotic particles decay more often into matter than antimatter. …the LHCb team reported a slight difference in the decay of particles called Bs mesons – but still not nearly enough to explain the matter mystery. One significant difference between the two may be the way they interact with gravity – antimatter may be repelled by matter, rather than attracted to it. But it is a difference that no one has been able to test – until the advent of Cern’s Alpha experiment. Alpha is an acronym for Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus – an experiment designed to build and trap antimatter “atoms”. Just as hydrogen is made of a proton and an electron, antihydrogen is an atom made of their antimatter counterparts antiprotons and positrons. The trick is not just in making it, but in making it hang around long enough to study it – before it bumps into any matter and annihilates…”

Inspired by Jason Palmer, BBC ow.ly/laBDO Image source LinkedIn ow.ly/laBo8

Frank Close the 67 year old British particle physicist, Professor and author has published an article in the Prospect Magazine titled ‘The twin child of the Big Bang’ discussing the first moments of the universe, how we may soon find out why matter overpowered antimatter, its mirror opposite. Close states “…We know how the energy in the heat of the Big Bang created the basic seeds of matter, and how over the eons these particles have formed galaxies of stars, including our own Milky Way and solar system. …Matter is not the Big Bang’s only child. It was born with a long-lost twin: antimatter. Matter and antimatter are the yin and yang of reality. … When the energy of the Big Bang congealed into the fundamental particles of matter, an imprint in the form of metaphorical holes, their antimatter siblings, was also formed. …Experiments have shown that quarks are the basic seeds of matter as we know it. There are also exotic forms of matter, containing what are known as strange, charm or bottom quarks, which rarely exist independently, except under very special conditions, such as briefly during or just after the Big Bang. They are unstable and their decays produce the stable forms from which our mature universe is made. …tantalising results are beginning to emerge. As data accumulate, the experiments at Cern will reveal sharper images of the processes at work in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang. Why the Big Bang happened is likely to remain an enigma. Why the universe managed to survive, and evolve, may soon be answered.”

Inspired by Prospect Magazine ow.ly/ebfN3 image source ow.ly/ebfdR