It is not even the predominant stuff in the universe, far from it. So far, the physical properties of anti-hydrogen line up exactly with regular hydrogen.Įven though it is vastly more common, regular matter still seems almost like a cosmic afterthought, a rounding error. Photo by Keystone/Martial Trezzin / AP filesįujiwara, for example, is at CERN this week to work on an experiment measuring gravity’s effect on anti-hydrogen, to see whether maybe it falls up instead of down, or behaves differently in some other way. Article content The LHC (large hadron collider) in its tunnel at CERN, near Geneva. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. This left over matter was like the lingering smoke after a flash, and it is the key to all material existence today, everything from stardust to supernovas to spaghetti bolognese and the people who eat it. What seems to have happened is that for every billion or so annihilations in the moment after the Big Bang, a single regular particle was left behind, with no antimatter counterpart to annihilate it. They should have annihilated each other completely, perfectly, leaving nothing but a flash of light.Ĭlearly, this is not what happened. Photo by NASAĬurrent physics predicts that when the universe expanded from an infinitely hot and dense point nearly 14 billion years ago in the Big Bang, particles of matter and antimatter were created in equal measure. This image represents the evolution of the Universe, starting with the Big Bang. It is a glorious frustration, an experimental success but a theoretical red herring. No matter how closely scientists measure, they still look identical, only opposite. The only difference is that the proton is positive, the antiproton negative. What they discovered is that both the proton and the antiproton have a magnetic moment of 2.7928473. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.
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