Strong Forces Between Antipotons

Summary: Woah, a story about antimatter on an antimatter blog! Finally.

Unlike a lot of other anitmatter and particle physics news, this does not come to us from CERN but rather from in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven in New York. Here physicists were able to measure the interactions between antiprotons. It seems like it is also the strong force, an attractive force, that holds the antiprotons together just as it also holds the protons together. This is just one more way in which protons and antiprotons are essentially the same, the exception of their opposite charge. Because of the similarity scientists can rule this out as a possible explanation for the matter/antimatter asymmetry in the universe today.

BBC News
Nature

Symmetry of Nuclei

Summary: Finally, some news about antimatter! Scientists at the LHC who are working on ALICE, have been able to more precisely measure the nuclei of particles and their antiparticles. Happily they discovered that there is fundamental symmetry with their charge, parity, and time.

The ALICE experiment smashes particles together that create nuclei and antinuclei at the same rate which allow the scientists to study them easier.


Quarks to Quasars
Nature

10 Facts about Antimatter

Summary: Remember when this blog started and I tried to keep it focused solely on antimatter? That turned out to be too specific but I am once again able to get back to the heart of this blog. While not and advancement in antimatter studies, this is a recent article on ten facts you may not have known about antimatter. Contained within the article are helpful links to more topics related to antimatter that can quench your thirst for knowledge. Enjoy.

SymmetryMag

Source for Dark Matter and Antimatter News

I stumbled upon a link on the APS website to an archive of all their cosmology news which includes lots of articles on Dark Matter and antimatter and the beginnings of the universe. If any of that interests you, don't hesitate to check it out.


APS-Cosmology

A Blow to Possible Dark Matter

Summary: This is sorta the opposite of the news I would like to tell you about, but it does help refine our search for the elusive particles.
Back in April, the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) experiment looked like it had captured three candidates for dark matter particles.These particles had a mass approximately nine times that of a proton. However, yesterday, scientists working on the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment made an announcement negating CDMS's results. They argued that if the particles found by CDMS were in fact dark matter particles, then the larger and more sensitive LUX experiment that they had run would have seen about 1600 of these in their first run. However, their first run came up empty. It is of course possible that there are WIMPs hiding in the data or maybe they will be seen on the second run, but until then we have hit another wall in our quest.



Symmetry
Scientific American

Anti Neutrinos and new flavors

Summary: Neutrinos are particles that tend to switch identities (flavors) and an underground particle detector in China is helping to provide more information on these weird particles. They do this by creating mikllions of quadrillions of electron antineutrinos. That's right, finally another article that relates to antimatter! The Daya Bay neutrino oscillation data has helped researchers to pin down the probability of of the electron neutrino occupying each possible mass state.

The studying of neutrino oscillations may also provide new clues to the great mystery of the matter-antimatter unbalance in our universe.

All of these findings and more will be presented this week at NuFact2013 in Bejing.



Live Science

One Scoop of Neutrino Flavor Please

Summary: Scientists have discovered that neutrinos can change their flavor. "Experiments have now established that one particular type, known as the muon "flavour", can flip to the electron type during flight." This has a huge bearing on the mystery of the anti-matter/matter unbalance. It could potentially hint that neutrinos and their anti-neutrino partners display CP-violation (a type of asymmetry).


BBC News

Curiosity and other updates

Summary: Curiosity has discovered that most of Mars's atmosphere has since departed into space. Scientists discovered this by looking at the chemical of argon. Argon reacts with very little so the only way the lighter isotopes will have given way to a majority of the heavier isotopes is by escaping into outer space. The article does not comment on what this means when trying to determine whether or not Mars ever had flowing water other than to say that scientists are still split.


BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22063337


Summary: The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) in the sky has made some observations that may give additional evidence to dark matter. Stay tuned.

BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22016504


Summary: The LHC is being upgraded so that is can find new particles. Not too much info at this moment.


BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21941666

Another puzzle piece in the Standard Model

Summary: Scientists have now detected D-mesons (a very small and elusive particle) oscillating between matter and antimatter. Weird, but super cool. This was predicted to occur since the other mesons have already been proven to exhibit this weird behavior. Furthermore, this evidence crosses the "five-sigma" level of statistical certainty that is needed to declare it an actual discovery.



BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21594357

Next Antimatter experiment

Summary: In this video, scientists at CERN talk about their next big thing, ALPHA 2, and the challenges involved with building a new experiment.

Link: http://youtu.be/pqI9vv4Vfv8

Cracks in the Standard Model?

Summary: "Recently analyzed data from the BaBar experiment show that one type of particle decay happens more often than predicted by the Standard Model.  This excess, seen with a “3.4 sigma” level of certainty, is not enough to claim a definitive break from the accepted theory, but it is a sign that something could well be amiss."
Basically, particles aren't decaying into different particles with the same frequency as predicted. If validated it could point to the Higgs particle having a charge and there would be a huge ripple effect seen in the Standard Model.


Symmetry Magazine: http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2012/06/18/babar-data-may-hint-at-new-physics/

Majorana particle

Summary: A particle that is the opposite of itself (it does not have an antimatter equivalent) was theorized by the crazy scientist Ettore Majorana. After 75 years it seems as if Dutch scientists may have found this mysterious particle that could hold a key to learning more about dark matter.


BBC News:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17695944


SciShow: http://youtu.be/rOztrDmFFWM
(The above video also includes info on the possible discovery of life on Mars)

Matter vs Antimatter

Summary: A discussion on how supercomputing is/can be used to study the differences between antimatter and normal matter.


Symmetry Breaking: http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2012/03/29/supercomputing-the-difference-between-matter-and-antimatter/

Antimatter under a microscope?

Scientists at CERN are extremely close to being able to look at an atom of anti hydrogen under a microscope.

BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17284822

New antimatter development

Data from the Tevatron has further solidified unexpected data from the LHC regarding how particles decay. It is not quite at four sigmas of certainty but it is enough to make scientists think about the implications.

BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17200308Fermilab

New Particle Discoved at CERN

Summary:

The new particle is a 'beauty' quark and 'beauty' anti-quark bound together. Strong nuclear force keeps them together.

BBC News:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16301908

Plane lightning strike lab opens

BBC Story:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-15295608

quick summary: A £1.6m laboratory to investigate the effects of lightning strikes on aircraft 
opens in Cardiff.

This may not seem to relate to antimatter at all, but this is a lab that tests the effects of lightning strikes. If, in fact, the lightning behaves in the lab the same way it does naturally then it could be used to produce antimatter like natural lightning does. It would require some complex set-up to capture the antimatter but it may work. This would help advance antimatter technology and get us closer to cool new developments.