LHCb Experiment Reveals New Clues about Antimatter: Particle Decay Examined

The Large Hadron Collider may be out of commission for the next few years, but that doesn't mean that scientists have stopped their work. A detector at the LHC dedicated to resolving why our Universe is made of matter rather than antimatter has released some new and interesting results.

Called the LHCb experiment, the detector has observed the decays of particles known as Bs mesons that preferentially end up as matter rather than antimatter. Mesons are actually subatomic particles that are composed of one quark and one antiquark. Observing these mesons and their charged parity violations, which are slight non-symmetrical behaviors, allows researchers to find out why there simply is not more antimatter in the universe.

Every particle that we're aware of has an antimatter "twin", which is identical in every way except for the fact that it has an opposite electric charge. For example, the electrons and protons that make us up in part have positrons and antiprotons as their antimatter matches, according to BBC News.

The LHCb is actually just one of four main experiments sited at the LHC. It essentially tracks particles that are created when protons are smashed together. In this new study, though, it tracked how Bs mesons decayed further into either the matter or antimatter version of particle, called kaons. If one decayed more often to this final state than the other one, it would have showed a fundamental difference between matter and antimatter.

It turned out that's exactly what the researchers saw. They found a difference in about one in four of the decays. That said, more research still needs to be conducted before any wide-reaching conclusions are made. The researchers will have to consider different ways in which these particles and others decay into yet more particles. So far, the findings still fit without the existing theory-the Standard Model.

"The last thing people want is long lists of particle names--one's got to relate it to the bigger picture, and I think today is sort of a milestone in that picture. It's the first time that we've seen anything in Bs mesons," said Chris Parkes, spokesperson for the UK contingent of the LHCb Collaboration, in an interview with BBC News.

The findings are published online and have been submitted to the Physical Review Letters.