Thanks to Star Trek and other science fiction, most of us are familiar with the notion of antimatter – a “mirror-version” of the matter that makes up the world around us. Many science fiction writers have used the fact that matter and anti-matter explode when they come into contact to conjure up exotic-sounding ways of powering super-fast space ships or blowing things up. There’s usually an abundant supply of anti-matter in these stories but, in the real world, only minute amounts of antimatter have been seen in cosmic rays or created in particle accelerators.
Equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created at the birth of the universe but our universe seems to be made almost entirely from matter. So why do we live in a world made of matter, not antimatter? A new film at www.labreporter.com, uses claymation, a thumping electro soundtrack and a genuine particle physicist to explain why this is one of the biggest puzzles in science and how it might be solved.
Other films on the site bring to life David Miller’s analogy for the Higgs Mechanism, explain why scientists believe in Dark Matter and provide an exciting glimpse into the nearly completed Large Hadron Colldier – the biggest, most complicated scientific instrument ever built.