physics

physics Mysterious, elusive antimatter has been captured for a period of at least 1,000 seconds by a team of international researchers, including University of Calgary scientists.The feat marks a major leap forward from the fraction of a second that antimatter was previously captured at the world's largest particle physics lab, at CERN -the European Organization for Nuclear Research."The whole point of this project is to try to basically understand what antimatter looks like. If you catch it for a fraction of a second, it's gone in a flash, you don't have time to look at it, to interrogate it," said Rob Thompson, a U of C physics professor. "The longer we can hold it, the more we can use conventional physics techniques to really try to look at it.


paper on the team's findings was published Sunday in the online journal Nature Physics.Antimatter, the stuff of Star Trek science fiction and, more recently, toted around in the movie Angels and Demons, contains information that scientists say could potentially shake the core of physics.Current theory of the universe's beginnings suggests that matter and antimatter should have been produced equally. However, since they destroy each other on contact, eventually nothing should have remained but pure energy. Instead, only antimatter seems to have vanished."One of the big mysteries in science is what happened to antimatter," said Makoto Fujiwara, lead author and a U of C adjunct professor.
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/entertainment/Researchers+capture+elusive+antimatter/4898541/story.html#ixzz1OZg9EaO3

physics