I realize it’s been egregiously silent here at the Astrowright blog for some time. Apparently, I am not immune to the same disappointing (as a reader) dry spells experienced in/by so many other blogs I’ve followed during the years.
(With grad school, teaching at CSN, my day-job working for DOE, a side-business or two in flux, moonlighting the occasional and surreal TV project, and with a 1&1/2-year-old at home – let’s just say I’ve come to terms with the reality that I’m not a juggling Jedi yet.)
Excuses aside, however, I wanted to take a moment to relay a devastatingly exciting potential discovery, which itself was prompted by a pleasant surprise…
CERN’s ALPHA experiment – our Anti-Virgil into Dante’s Antimatter Inferno? (Credit: CERN)
Antimatter in Focus
As reported on SpaceRef.com and NASAWatch.com, which prominently featured the antimatter symbol I created a couple of years back (i.e., the pleasant surprise – thanks, Keith!), we may be one giant leap closer to figuring out antimatter – and with it, peer a little farther into the mysterious underpinnings of the Fundamental Forces of Nature.
In an article titled, “Does Antimatter Fall Up or Down?” Keith Cowing reports that researchers at CERN’s Alpha Experiment recently published in Nature Communications their tantalizing antimatter research progress.
Specifically, these CERN specialists have identified a process for finally determining whether or not gravity acts upon antimatter the same way it does upon “ordinary” matter, even if they haven’t answered the question quite yet. (See Keith’s article for more details on their experiment, what it means, and where it’s going.)
Down the Anti-Rabbit Hole
So, why do we or should we care about figuring out what antimatter really is and how the universe treats it? Well, quite simply, it has the possibility of providing new solutions to many current problems in physics.
Dark Energy, Dark Matter, and questions about early Cosmic Inflation all essentially deal with versions of the same issue: There are apparent problems with the amount of force we see in the universe versus how much we should expect.
Perhaps a shift in our understanding of fundamental forces, like gravity, will shed new light.
This is to say nothing of the mystery concerning why the universe appears to be all matter and generally no antimatter. According to physics as we understand it, there’s no reason for the bias. (Why not areas of high concentrations of antimatter and others of normal matter?)
And to make matters yet more interesting, the late, great Dr. Richard Feynman (and others) have described antimatter as being inditinguishable from (or perhaps actually being!) ordinary matter moving backwards through time. While few physicists believe this is actually the case, it certainly bends neurons considering that it remains a physical possibility*.
(*I should note that this idea of antiparticles moving “backwards” in time, in order to be true, requires a reconstruction of what we mean by “time.” This is because antiparticles don’t blip out of existence as they move to the “past” with respect to us as we, presumably, continue to move into the “future.” Instead, we remain with the antiparticles in the same measurable “now” in the universe…)
Antimatter – A Guiding Star
Keep an eye on this one, folks. It could very well be that the study of antimatter provides us the wedge we need to evolve beyond peering through the keyhole at the universe and instead throw open the door.
Optimistic? Admittedly.
However, we’re due for our big 21st Century paradigm shift in the sciences. What with the recent 100 Year Starship Symposium hinting at what the future has to offer us (along with humanity’s expanding view of our galactic neighborhood and our desire to get out there and engage it), it’s high time we get on inventing that superluminal propulsion system to Alpha Centauri, already.
I’m not getting any younger.
Astrowright 
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