Antimatter: sci-fi or science fact?

A glimpse into the mirror-image world...

The Friday Science Lecture by Prof Bob Cywinski, School of Applied Sciences, University of Huddersfield

THE blockbuster sequel to Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” should be hitting our cinema screens in a little over a month’s time. And “Angels and Demons” promises to be another fast-paced thriller with a religious theme.

The action involves the fiendish villains stealing a minute amount of antimatter from CERN in order to make a bomb far more powerful than any nuclear weapon. Their intention is to annihilate the Vatican in a cataclysmic explosion.

The story is well researched and, more to the point, it is very believable. After all, most of us have heard of the immense power of antimatter, if only because of the long-running “Star Trek” series, in which antimatter engines power the warp drive of the Starship Enterprise as it boldly goes on its adventures across the Universe.

And there lies a problem.

Our encounters with antimatter are almost entirely through science fiction stories and movies. It is therefore very tempting to dismiss antimatter itself as little more than a creation of science fiction.

Beyond our comfortable, familiar world of matter could there really be a looking-glass world: an antimatter world built of particles that are mirror images of those of real matter? And, if a particle of antimatter met its matter counterpart, would both be instantly destroyed in a spectacular burst of energy?

Surprisingly, the answer to both questions is “yes”. Anti-matter is very definitely science fact, not science fiction.

The existence of antimatter was first predicted in an elegant theory of quantum physics proposed by the brilliant Cambridge physicist Paul Dirac almost exactly 80 years ago.

Four years later the American Carl Anderson discovered the antimatter equivalent of the electron, called the positron, among the many high energy subatomic particles that rain down on earth’s upper atmosphere in cosmic showers.

It is now known that positrons are created on Earth in some forms of radioactivity, but most of the other antiparticles, such as the antiproton and antineutron, can be created only by using particle accelerators.

However, the accelerator experiments at CERN and elsewhere have shown that it is possible to combine these antiparticles in just the same way that real particles combine, for example by putting a positron and antiproton together to make an anti-hydrogen atom!

Physicists now believe that matter and antimatter were produced in equal proportions in the Big Bang that created our Universe 13 billion years ago. Yet we now observe very little antimatter in the Universe, or at least in our part of it.

This has led to one of the great questions in physics — “where has all the antimatter gone?” — and to speculation that the “lost” antimatter may be concentrated in other antimatter universes, where perhaps anti-planets orbit anti-suns. Perhaps the anti-planets are populated by anti-people that we could never meet, or we would both instantly be destroyed in a powerful burst of radiation.

But, then again, perhaps such speculation is just taking us back to the realms of science fiction.

Clearly, separating the fact from the fiction is not easy.

However, a fascinating new book entitled simply “Antimatter”, by Frank Close OBE, will probably do a great deal to help. Professor Close will be delivering a public lecture based upon his book as part of the University of Huddersfield’s Research Festival next Wednesday.

In this lecture, Professor Close will talk about both the fact and the fiction of antimatter, and show how science is revealing a world that is far stranger than any science fiction.

Prof Close, of Oxford University, is not only a distinguished theoretical physicist but also a well known and highly respected science writer.

He is dedicated to the task of explaining the most complex aspects of the physical universe to the general public.

His popular science books include “The Cosmic Onion” (the subject of the televised Royal Institution Christmas Lectures), “Too Hot to Handle: The Story of the Race for Cold Fusion”, “Lucifer’s Legacy” and “The Void”.