IT IS a mystery of cosmic proportions: why is the universe filled with matter and not antimatter? Physicists hoping to find the answer have been left scratching their heads this week by an analysis which claims that some antihydrogen atoms created last year may not be normal antiatoms after all. Instead they may sit on the blurry line between atoms and plasma.
Antihydrogen atoms consist of a positron (a positively charged “anti-electron”) orbiting a negatively charged antiproton. Physicists hope that by creating and studying such antiatoms they will discover why the universe apparently contains so much more matter than antimatter.…
