Other matters and anti-matters with implications for energy and the even bigger bomb:
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Japan forges lead in antimatter field - Local B-meson factory could answer big questions - like why universe exists
nni.nikkei.co.jp
Issued: July 9, 2001SHIGEHIKO NAKAJIMAStaff writer
A researcher looks over the Antiproton Decelerator - the world's first facility designed to create antimatter - at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
The Antiproton Decelerator, located at CERN - the European Organization for Nuclear Research near Geneva - is the first factory in the world designed to produce antimatter.The facility has begun churning out antiprotons, and high-energy physicists hope to use these particles to help solve a fundamental mystery of nature.But the AD is not the only kind of factory that high-energy physicists can work with. Another is Japan's B Factory, so called because its role is to produce quantities of the B meson, one of the elementary particles from which all things in the universe are made.Japan's High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) is home to the world's most productive B factory, called the KEKB. The scientists conducting studies with this prolific source of B mesons have the opportunity to prove a theory and, in the process, give two Japanese physicists a shot at the Nobel Prize in physics.Opposite campsAntimatter has the same composition and mass as matter, but it is made from antiparticles, which carry the opposite charge. Thus, the antiparticle of the electron is the positively charged positron, and the antiparticle of the proton is the negatively charged antiproton. Positrons and antiprotons combine to make elements like antihydrogen and antihelium, which are thought to behave in the same way and follow the same laws as their more familiar physical-world opposites.There is nothing unusual about generating antiprotons and other types of antimatter in particle accelerators - but the antimatter immediately collides with matter and disappears. Physicists know that matter and antimatter annihilate each other upon collision, releasing immense amounts of energy.But cosmological theory holds that particles and antiparticles - matter and antimatter - existed in equal amounts at the creation of the universe. So it is a mystery why the universe exists at all. Why didn't all the matter and antimatter annihilate each other at the beginning of the universe? And why can't scientists find any stars made of antimatter?One hypothesis proposed to explain the mystery of the missing antimatter is that the properties of particles and antiparticles are not perfectly symmetrical. According to the Kobayashi-Masukawa Theory - advanced by Makoto Kobayashi of KEK and Toshihide Masukawa of Kyoto University - quarks and antiquarks might decay at different rates. Since B mesons are formed from quarks and antiquarks, the KEKB facility provides a unique opportunity to test this theory by studying the behavior of B mesons.Located at Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, KEKB is a 3km ring that accelerates electrons and positrons to near the speed of light and then crashes them together to recreate the high-energy conditions that existed at the birth of the universe.The collision events create B and anti-B mesons that exist for a fleeting moment before being transformed into other elementary particles. KEKB produces B mesons in large enough amounts for scientists to study quarks and antiquarks in unprecedented detail.Advances in experimental particle physics have traditionally been carried out at facilities in Europe and the U.S. But KEKB is now surpassing the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in California as the premier center for B meson studies. "The equipment has overtaken SLAC in terms of performance, and Japan is taking the lead in antimatter research," said KEK's Katsunobu Oide. Indeed, the KEKB experiments could produce proof of the Kobayashi-Masukawa Theory. KEKB turns out B mesons, while the European AD produces antiprotons in what truly deserves to be called a factory. Accelerators produce antiprotons on a regular basis, but they immediately collide with the walls and are extinguished. The AD, however, is specially designed not only to produce antiprotons in large quantities, but also to slow them down so they exist long enough to be measured and studied.The AD produces antiprotons for experiments, and in theory, these antiprotons could be packaged and shipped to Japan. But instead, high-energy physicists from around the world travel to Geneva to do their studies there.Two teams from Europe and the U.S. are using antiprotons to create and study antihydrogen atoms.Meanwhile, a Japanese team led by Kenichiro Komaki and Ryugo Hayano of the University of Tokyo is conducting an ambitious project to create and study atoms not of this world, such as "antiproton helium."By closely examining these odd kinds of atoms, the Japanese team thinks it might uncover phenomena that differ ever so slightly from the world of modern physics.The studies approach things from a different angle than the KEKB factory experiments, but "they are essential for understanding the origin of the universe," said Komaki.It was a team at the University of Tokyo that in 1994 became the first to create antiproton helium. Antiprotons normally exist for a mere trillionth of a second, but placing the antiparticle inside antiproton helium increased their duration of existence more than a millionfold.That development provided a tremendous boost to the study of antimatter and served as the driving force in the construction of the CERN antiproton factory.Western researchers commonly take the lead in fundamental science, but in antimatter research it is the Japanese who are the front-runners. "It's a problem not having any rivals," noted Hayano. Scientists thrive on competition, but for researchers in the life sciences in Japan, this problem must seem more like a luxury.The extent to which antimatter research will influence industrial developments in the future can only be guessed at. Combining 2kg of matter and antimatter, for example, would release enough energy to power the whole world for an hour. Unfortunately, the CERN antiproton factory would need an inconceivable stretch of time to make that much antimatter.But just as the advent of quantum mechanics at the start of the 20th century eventually led to the information-technology revolution at the end of the century, antimatter research is no doubt preparing the ground for the flowering of high-tech industries undreamt of today.
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