7
August 2003
Particle physics: The matter with antimatter
The Universe is made of matter, not antimatter. But the Big Bang should have created the two in equal amounts. Something tipped the scales in favour of matter, and that something may involve "CP violation". Discovered in the 1960s in the decays of subatomic particles (kaons), this phenomenon has since been found to be a natural feature of the standard model of particle physics, which includes six types of "quark". But the picture isn't complete: more detail will be painted in by experiments, both existing and planned, at the world's high-energy colliders.
Particle physics: Antimatter matters
JOHN ELLIS
Matter dominates antimatter, at least in our corner of the Universe. Part
of the explanation could be an imbalance between the two at the level
of fundamental interactions, encapsulated in the phenomenon of CP violation.
Nature 424, 631–634 (2003); doi:10.1038/424631a
| Full Text
(HTML / PDF) |
