The Hindu : International : Search for antimatter

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 21, 2004

International

International

Search for antimatter

London: Japanese and U.S. scientists in Antarctica plan to search the edge of space for some of the rarest creatures in the universe — bits of antimatter from primordial black holes. Antimatter is matter's exact opposite: electrons, protons and even atoms in reverse. The catch is that when antimatter meets matter, both are completely destroyed. But a package of sensitive detectors suspended 40 km above could be above 99 per cent of the Earth's atmosphere to detect fragments of antimatter predicted decades ago by Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge cosmologist. Professor Hawking proposed that antimatter could arrive in the form of what is now called ``Hawking radiation'' leaked from black holes. The researchers have tested the equipment with short flights above the Canadian Arctic. Now they want to get the detectors 40 km above the Antarctic, for a flight of at least 10 days. ``Our earlier, shorter flights have provided hints of the signature of Hawking radiation,'' said Akira Yamamoto of Japan's High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation. ``With a longer flight and a greater `harvest' of antiprotons, we might be able to show that Prof Hawking is right.'' One of the goals of experiment is to detect any antimatter left over from the creation of the universe. —

Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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