Large Hadron Collider finds first evidence for the existence of the heaviest antimatter particle

The world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, built at the European Center for Nuclear Research, has found the first evidence of the existence of the heaviest antimatter particle. Scientists at CERN's ALICE detector are recreating the conditions found during the Big Bang in an effort to understand how matter came to dominate antimatter.

This means that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has given scientists a glimpse into the conditions that existed when the Universe was less than a second old. According to the scientists, the antimatter particle is a partner of a massive matter particle called hyperhelium-4, and its discovery may help to solve the mystery of why ordinary matter began to dominate the Universe, despite the fact that matter and antimatter were created in equal amounts, Space.com writes.

This imbalance is known as "matter-antimatter asymmetry," scientists say. Matter particles and antimatter particles annihilate upon contact, releasing their energy back into space. This means that if the imbalance between them had not arisen at an early stage of the Universe, the cosmos might indeed have been a more empty and less interesting place, experts explain.

According to scientists, the collisions that occur at the Large Hadron Collider create a state of matter called "quark-gluon plasma." This dense sea of plasma is the same as the "primordial broth" of matter that filled the universe about one-millionth of a second after the Big Bang, the researchers say.

And it is from this quark-gluon plasma that exotic "hypernuclei" and their antimatter counterparts emerge, allowing scientists to glimpse the conditions of the early Universe. According to scientific data, hypernuclei contain protons and neutrons, like ordinary atomic nuclei, as well as unstable particles called "hyperons."

Hypernuclei were first detected in cosmic rays, streams of charged particles that fall to Earth from deep space, about seven decades ago. However, they are rarely found in nature and are difficult to create and study in the laboratory, the researchers note.

The discovery of the first evidence of hypernuclei, which are analogous to hyperhelium-4 from antimatter, was made at the LHC ALICE detector.

According to the scientists, ALICE has detected a heavier anti-hypernuclear particle, anti-hyperhelium-4, consisting of two antiprotons, an antineutron, and an antilambda.

The signature of antihyperhelium-4 was found by decaying it into other particles and detecting these particles.

In addition to capturing evidence of antihyperhelium-4 and antihydrogen-4, the ALICE team was also able to determine their masses, which were in good agreement with current theories of particle physics.

The reason for the matter-antimatter imbalance in the Universe remains unknown, but anti-helium-4 and anti-hydrogen-4 may provide important clues to this mystery, scientists emphasize.

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