Anti-Matters (N03)

Anti-matter is the opposite of matter. Anti-matter is an extremely hostile twin of matter. When they meet, both annihilate (disappear). This is not fiction. It is a topic of physics (science) being researched at the leading edge. We should be glad that no anti-matters exist on Earth or else we would live in a ghost village. This article attempts to introduce some modern science concepts to layman intellects. It contains several physics terms such as quark and positron (just say hello to them and read on). The author believes a wide horizon is a big picture, and it is the basis of good reasoning abilities.

One theory is that at the time of the Big Bang (the proposed start of the Universe), there was nothing. The Big Bang split nothing into matters and anti-matters. If this theory is correct, we should be able to find equal amounts of matters and anti-matters scattered in different places in the Universe. If there are no anti-matters on Earth, where would they be?

A very expensive set of instruments is now sitting on the outside of the International Space Station (ISS) which orbits the Earth at an altitude of 400km to detect and measure anti-matters coming from Space among other purposes. This instrument set is in its 2nd version. The 1st version AMS-1 was launched onto ISS in 1998 and replaced by the 2nd version AMS-2 in 2011. AMS-2 incurred 4 spacewalks by astronauts on ISS to put the instrument set into the prescribed working conditions.

AMS stands for Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. This project is led by Professor CC Ting as the Principal Investigator. He won the Nobel prize in Physics in 1976 for leading to the discovery of the 4th quark which is in the class of smallest particles known to human at this point in time.

Professor Ting announced that AMS-2 recorded 400,000 positron events by 2013-03. Positron is the anti-particle of Electron. They are twins with opposite electric charge. Electron is in the class of smallest particles known as Leptons (as against Quarks).

AMS-2 had discovered a few signals consistent with anti-helium nuclei amidst several billion helium nuclei by 2016-12. The ratio is about 1 to 10^9 (10 to the power 9). In other words, the chance of detecting anti-helium at the ISS orbit is 10^-9 or one billionth.

If there were the same amounts of matters and antimatters at the Big Bang, where are the other antimatters now which is about 13.7 billion years after the Big Bang? Are the so-called Dark Matters actually antimatters? Have the antimatters formed another universe outside of our Universe? These are big questions!

There are still a lot of questions which human cannot answer. There are more questions and anti-questions which human do not even know how to ask because they are hidden in nothing. Who said we knew it all? Science makes us humble.

The data collected and processed by AMS-2 is downloaded to CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) for further processing and distribution. CERN is based in Geneva of Switzerland. We hear very often about its Large Hadron Collider. The Collider creates 2 streams of particles running at opposite directions underground and let them collide to create new particles if any. In contrast, AMS2 detects natural anti-particles in space and does not create any.