Re:ALPHA observes light spectrum of antimatter for first time
by dguest on Monday December 19, 2016 @05:17PM
(#13215491)
Antimatter is old news. When CERN discovered the higgs boson a few years back, we did so by looking for the higgs decay products (the higgs is really unstable), a significant fraction of which are antimatter.
For example: One of the most important higgs signals was the Higgs -> 2 Z boson -> 2 electron + 2 anti-electron decay chain. Or in particle physics jargon H -> ZZ, Z -> e+e-. The important thing is that e+ is an anti-particle, one of the few that was discovered early enough to get its own name (the "positron" was discovered in 1932 [1]).
Since the positron discovery we've discovered so many anti-particles that we stopped giving them special names. We just call them e+, mu+, tau+, p-, etc, to say nothing of the composite particles that are composed of both matter and antimatter.
For example: One of the most important higgs signals was the Higgs -> 2 Z boson -> 2 electron + 2 anti-electron decay chain. Or in particle physics jargon H -> ZZ, Z -> e+e-. The important thing is that e+ is an anti-particle, one of the few that was discovered early enough to get its own name (the "positron" was discovered in 1932 [1]).
Since the positron discovery we've discovered so many anti-particles that we stopped giving them special names. We just call them e+, mu+, tau+, p-, etc, to say nothing of the composite particles that are composed of both matter and antimatter.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron#Experimental_clues_an...