Uniting Dark Matter and Antimatter to answer science’s most fundamental questions
Two of the most pressing mysteries in science are the nature of dark matter and the reason matter dominates over antimatter and a pioneering new experiment could hold the key to solving both.
Investigating how dark matter interacts with antimatter, and if this differs from how it interacts with ordinary matter could answer two of the most fundamental questions in science. What is dark matter, and why does matter vastly outweigh antimatter?
Enter scientists from the BASE collaboration and their pioneering new experiment to discover a discrepancy in the way antimatter interacts with dark matter as compared to everyday matter. Should this be the case, searching for dark matter with antimatter could reveal how the latter came to be dominated by its conventional matter counter-part.
“We’re looking for hints,” says Stefan Ulmer, spokesperson of the BASE collaboration, explaining the collaboration’s mission. “If we find a slight difference between matter and antimatter particles, it won’t tell us why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter, but it would be an important clue.”
