When matter and antimatter particles come into contact, they annihilate each other in a burst of energy - similar to what happened in the Big Bang, some 14 billion years ago. Precision studies of hydrogen and antihydrogen atoms, for example, reveal similarities to beyond the billionth decimal place.

'Till then, we need to await theoretical attempts to explain the observation in less esoteric means,' he adds.Įvery particle of matter has a corresponding antiparticle, identical in every way, but with an opposite charge.

The findings may also indicate new physics beyond the Standard Model, which describes how fundamental particles interact with one another. 'It's a milestone in antimatter research.' 'There have been many attempts to measure matter-antimatter asymmetry, but, until now, no one has succeeded,' says Stone, who collaborates on the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. Mesons are subatomic particles composed of one quark and one antiquark, bound together by strong interactions. He and members of the College's High-Energy Physics (HEP) research group have measured, for the first time and with 99.999-percent certainty, a difference in the way D0 mesons and anti-D0 mesons transform into more stable byproducts. Distinguished Professor Sheldon Stone says the findings are a first, although matter-antimatter asymmetry has been observed before in particles with strange quarks or beauty quarks.

What does anti matter look like