'Beauty' particle discovered at world's largest atom smasher could unlock new physics

By Ben Turner
published 11 hours ago

Why matter dominates over antimatter in our universe has long been a major cosmic mystery to physicists. A new finding by the world's largest particle collider has revealed a clue.



Atomic structure, large collider, CERN concept.
An artist's illustration of particles colliding in the Large Hadron Collider (Image credit: koto_feja via Getty Images)

Physicists at the world's largest particle accelerator have made a first-of-its-kind discovery about antimatter that could help solve one of the universe's biggest mysteries.

The discovery — made at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, near Geneva — has revealed that a short-lived cousin of protons and neutrons, the beauty-lambda baryon, decays at a different rate than its antimatter counterpart.

Called charge-parity (CP) violation, this effect refers to particles of opposite charge, like matter and animatter, behaving differently. It's a crucial explanation for why matter was able to dominate over antimatter in the early universe — without it, the universe would be an empty void.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/physics-mathematics/particle-physics/beauty-particle-discovered-at-worlds-largest-atom-smasher-could-unlock-new-physics