[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ]

Belle II and the matter of antimatter

Go inside the new detector looking for why we’re here

For Symmetry Magazine:

We live in a world full of matter: stars made of matter, planets made of matter, pizza made of matter. But why is there pizza made of matter rather than pizza made of antimatter or, indeed, no pizza at all?

In the first split-second after the big bang, the universe made a smidgen more matter than antimatter. Instead of matter and antimatter annihilating one another and leaving an empty, cold universe, we ended up with a surplus of stuff. Now scientists need the most sensitive detectors and mountains of experimental data to understand where that imbalance comes from.

Belle II is one of those detectors that will look for differences between matter and antimatter to explain why we’re here at all. Currently under construction, the 7.5-meter-long detector will be installed in the newly recommissioned SuperKEKB particle accelerator located in Tsukuba, Japan. SuperKEKB runs beams of electrons and positrons (the antimatter version of electrons) into each other at close to the speed of light, and Belle II—once it is fully operational in 2018—will analyze the detritus of the collisions. [Read the rest at Symmetry Magazine…]