In a remarkable scientific breakthrough, researchers have successfully cooled and slowed down samples of positronium, an exotic atom composed of an electron and a positron, using carefully tuned lasers. This pioneering work could pave the way for a deeper understanding of antimatter and its role in the universe.
The Curious Case of Antimatter
Scientists have spent decades seeking an answer to why our universe is dominated by matter, when the big bang should have produced equal amounts of antimatter.
Antimatter — the opposite of normal matter — has long captured the imaginations of scientists. Matter and antimatter annihilate each other on contact, releasing energy in the course. This was considered as the key to unraveling a fragment about our understanding of the universe, explaining the imbalance between what is observed with matter, and how much in reality should have been aligned in abundance quantity both with anti-matter.
Cooling and slowing down positronium, a special combination of matter and antimatter particles helps to better understand the properties of antialleretic materials, achieved in Edinburgh. Researchers now hope to learn from the behavior of this exotic atom in an effort to shed light on what are essentially pieces missing from the puzzle of all things cosmic.
Antimatter Research Breakthrough Made Possible Thanks To Laser-Powered Cooling
The subject of this pioneering research is a very special and fascinating atom: positronium. Positronium+Unlike normal atoms with an integer positive atomic number, which are constituted of positively charged protons and neutral neutrons or negatively charged electrons, positronium outside a single negatron and one antii (positron).
They decay rapidly on their own, but a team from the University of Tokyo has come up with an impressive method to chill and control samples of positronium using precision laser tuning. The problem is that to create the Bose-Einstein condensate state, the positronium gas needs to be cooled down by a factor of about 1000 and normal laser cooling does not directly work for positron. This method applied is a virtual electric-like force against the atoms’ original movement in order to slow them down and hence cool.
In the course of a few ten-millionths of a second, the team managed to chill some positronium gas pockets all the way down to just 1 degree above absolute zero from an initial temperature of 600 Kelvin (327 degrees Celsius). The cooling of the polariton system has revealed uncharted territories for studying this exotic state of matter.
Conclusion
Scientists have finally succeeded in cooling and slowing down the largely unknown stuff that makes up our missing universe: positronium, an atom-like particle of antimatter. The researchers believe that by learning more about the behavior of this exotic alien atom they may shed light on why there is so much less matter than antimatter in our universe(compare ). These findings open up more paths for discovery into newly unearthed antimatter aspects which, in turn, could allow us to take a step forward on comprehending basic principles defining our existence that are currently unrevealed.
