Experiments at CERN's particle collider suggest that antihelium particles created by dark matter in distant space could make it to Earth
wanted to see whether antinuclei created in space could make it to detectors in Earth’s neighbourhood intact.First, they measured how many antihelium nuclei get destroyed when they hit regular matter inside a particle collider. Using the ALICE detector at the CERN particle physics laboratory in Switzerland, they analysed collisions of very high-energy protons and charged atoms, which produced both helium nuclei and antihelium nuclei.
Königstorfer says they used this “disappearance probability” in a computer simulation of antimatter’s journey towards Earth from distant space, such as the centre of our galaxy. Simulations of antinuclei being created by dark matter showed that about half of such particles would be detectable near Earth unscathed, even after traversing thousands of trillions of kilometres.
This shows that any low-energy antihelium nuclei we detect on Earth will likely have come from dark matter, says“This experiment says that if any astrophysical object for any reason produces antihelium, we can detect it near Earth with standard detectors.
at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He says that understanding this better could help researchers fine-tune theories of dark matter.
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The Large Hadron Collider reveals how far antimatter can travel through the Milky WayRobert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.’s Open University. Follow him on Twitter sciencef1rst.
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