The tiny, short-lived objects are composed of exotic antimatter particles.
The results werepublished earlier this month inNature.
A missing mirror world
The idea of antimatter is less than a century old.
The relativistic heavy ion collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory.Image: Brookhaven National Laboratory
However, this raises another question.
But everywhere we look, we see matterand only insignificant amounts of antimatter.
Where did the antimatter go?
That is a question that has vexed scientists for nearly a century.
Each collision produces hundreds of new particles, and the STAR experiment can detect them all.
Antihyperhydrogen
In nature, the nuclei of atoms are made of protons and neutrons.
What they detected at the STAR experiment was a hypernucleus made of antimatter, or an antihypernucleus.
In fact, it was the heaviest and most exotic antimatter nucleus ever seen.
Among the billions of pions produced, the STAR researchers identified just 16 antihyperhydrogen-4 nuclei.
The hypernuclei are all unstable and decay after about a tenth of a nanosecond.
A shadow world as well?
Antimatter also has fascinating links to another exotic substance, dark matter.
This latest paper provides a wealth of data for that jot down of calibration.
Basic questions remain
We have learned a lot about antimatter over the past century.
Ulrik Egede is ais a professor of physics atMonash University.
This article is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license.
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