The Universe's Dark Secret: Where Did All the Antimatter Go?
The Universe's Dark Secret: Where Did All the Antimatter Go?
By Paul Sutter 8 hours ago
Electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons, interact around a neutron star in this visualization. Why is there so much more matter than antimatter in the universe we can see?(Image: © NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)
So there's this stuff called "antimatter." You may have heard of it. It's just like normal matter, with all the same properties and all the same abilities to make up atoms and molecules, except for one crucial difference: It has an opposite charge. Take the humble electron, for example. Mass of 9.11 x 10^-31 kg. Quantum spin of 1/2. Charge of 1.6 x 10^-9 coulombs.
It has an antimatter evil twin, the positron. The positron has a mass of 9.11 x 10^-31 kg. Quantum spin of 1/2. Charge of … -1.6 x 10^-9 coulombs.
It's the same for every other particle out there. There's a dark-side twin for the top quark, the neutrino, the muon and on and on and on. All the fundamental particles that make up our daily lives have a partner, living just on the other side of the charge fence.
That's all well and dandy and no big deal at all, except for one thing, which is a tiny bit of a big deal. As far as we can understand the theory and see in the observations, not only are matter and antimatter paired up like this, they're symmetric. Every particle of normal matter produced in a reaction comes paired with its antimatter sibling.
More:
https://www.space.com/where-did-all-the-antimatter-go.html?utm_source=notification
