LHC 'Big Questions'
4) Where is the antimatter?
The Big Bang created equal amounts of matter and antimatter, but we only see matter now. What happened to the antimatter?
Every fundamental matter particle has an antimatter partner with equal but opposite properties such as electric charge (for example, the negative electron has a positive antimatter partner called the positron). Equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created in the Big Bang, but antimatter then disappeared. So what happened to it? Experiments have already shown that some matter particles decay at different rates from their anti-particles, which could explain this. One of the LHC experiments will study these subtle differences between matter and antimatter particles.
© 2013 Science and Technology Facilities Council - All Rights Reserved.
