Did you know that the most expensive substance in the world is antimatter? According to official NASA figures, one milligram of positrons of this rare substance is worth approximately $ 25 million! At the same time, it is hardly possible to obtain antimatter in laboratory conditions due to the fact that all previous attempts to create a unique source of energy have failed. Why? It seems that the answer to this question may be hidden in very common and at the same time mysterious particles - neutrinos.
What is antimatter?
In physics, antimatter is simply the “opposite” of matter. The point is that antimatter particles always have the same mass as their counterparts, while possessing somewhat different “inverted” properties. So, protons in matter have a positive charge, and antiprotons have a negative charge. Antimatter could theoretically be created in a laboratory setting when high-energy particles collide, however, these events almost always create equal parts of both antimatter and matter, and when two opposite particles come into contact with each other, both collapse in a powerful wave of pure energy.
What puzzles physicists is that almost everything in the universe, including humans, is made of matter, rather than equal parts of matter and antimatter. Looking for ideas that might explain what is keeping our universe from creating separate galaxies made of antimatter, researchers have found some evidence that the answer may be hiding in very common but poorly understood particles known to humankind as neutrinos.
Can neutrinos interact in antimatter?
In order to be able to answer questions about the nature of antimatter, a team of researchers led by Christopher Moher recently published the results of the first set of experiments aimed at studying the properties of neutrinos. So, according to the plans of scientists, in the very near future a special deep-sea neutrino experiment (DUNE) can be carried out by a person, which is the creation of an experimental setup for researching neutrino science and particle physics.
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In order to understand the nature of the interaction of neutrinos and antimatter, scientists plan to create a unique underground instrument called DUNE.
In order to be able to answer questions about the nature of antimatter, a team of researchers led by Christopher Moher recently published the results of the first set of experiments aimed at studying the properties of neutrinos. So, according to the plans of scientists, in the very near future a special deep-sea neutrino experiment (DUNE) can be carried out by a person, which is the creation of an experimental setup for researching neutrino science and particle physics.
Currently, well-known particle colliders, such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, conduct experiments on quarks - particles that "construct" the protons and neutrons of the atomic nucleus. Through these experiments, some evidence has been found that matter and antimatter are indeed symmetrical. At the same time, experiments on leptons - light, weakly interacting with matter particles, hint that these particles could more fully explain the universal asymmetry of standard matter and antimatter.
The problem with studying neutrinos is that these tiny particles rarely interact with other particles. Finding these rare interactions means that researchers need to study large numbers of neutrinos over long periods of time. In addition, the constant flux of muons from cosmic ray interactions in the upper atmosphere can make it difficult to detect already infrequent interactions.
The researchers believe that in order to solve such a problem that threatens the study of neutrino particles, we need to descend about one and a half kilometers into the Earth, building several 10-ton detectors and filling them from the inside with liquid argon. Immediately after that, scientists are proposed to launch a neutrino beam in the direction of the installation, which must be previously made in a nearby particle accelerator. According to the authors of the DUNE program, this installation will be located by 2022 at the Sanford underground research center near Chicago, and, possibly, it will be able to help in the study of the properties of the interaction of neutrinos and antimatter.
Despite the fact that the study of neutrino particles may take more than a dozen years, the authors believe that the DUNE project may not only answer many seemingly insoluble questions from the field of astrophysics, mathematics and particle physics, but it may even contain a key to understanding of how and why you and I were able to appear in our Universe. But this is already exciting.
Daria Eletskaya
