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Using the Sun to Illuminate a Basic Mystery of Matter and Anti-matter

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The LHCb collaboration at CERN today submitted a paper to Physical Review Letters on the first observation of matter-antimatter asymmetry in the decays of the particle known as the B0s. It is only the fourth subatomic particle known to exhibit such behaviour.
And Now latest,of today....

Antimatter has been detected in solar flares via microwave and magnetic-field data, according to a presentation by NJIT Research Professor of Physics Gregory D. Fleishman and two co-researchers at the 44th meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Solar Physics Division. This research sheds light on the puzzling strong asymmetry between matter and antimatter by gathering data on a very large scale using the Sun as a laboratory.

While antiparticles can be created and then detected with costly and complex particle-accelerator experiments, such particles are otherwise very difficult to study. However, Fleishman and the two co-researchers have reported the first remote detection of relativistic antiparticles -- positrons -- produced in nuclear interactions of accelerated ions in solar flares through the analysis of readily available microwave and magnetic-field data obtained from solar-dedicated facilities and spacecraft. That such particles are created in solar flares is not a surprise, but this is the first time their immediate effects have been detected.
The results of this research have far-reaching implications for gaining valuable knowledge through remote detection of relativistic antiparticles at the Sun and, potentially, other astrophysical objects by means of radio-telescope observations. The ability to detect these antiparticles in an astrophysical source promises to enhance our understanding of the basic structure of matter and high-energy processes such as solar flares, which regularly have a widespread and disruptive terrestrial impact, but also offer a natural laboratory to address the most fundamental mysteries of the universe we live in.
Electrons and their antiparticles, positrons, have the same physical behavior except that electrons have a negative charge while positrons, as their name implies, have a positive charge. This charge difference causes positrons to emit the opposite sense of circularly polarized radio emission, which Fleishman and his colleagues used to distinguish them. To do that required knowledge of the magnetic field direction in the solar flare, provided by NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), and radio images at two frequencies from Japan's Nobeyama Radioheliograph. Fleishman and his colleagues found that the radio emission from the flare was polarized in the normal sense (due to more numerous electrons) at the lower frequency (lower energy) where the effect of positrons is expected to be small, but reversed to the opposite sense at the same location, although at the higher frequency (higher energy) where positrons can dominate.

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Source>>

a)First News:

Journal Reference:

LHCb collaboration. First observation of CP violation in the decays of Bs mesons. Physical Review Letters, 2013 (submitted); [link

b)Latest News:The above story is reprinted from materials provided by New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
 
To understand the news above for beginners..I would like to give a brief introduction of Positron--The anti-matter:

What is anti-matter?

In particle physics, antimatter is material composed of antiparticles, which have the same mass as particles of ordinary matter but have opposite charge and quantum spin. Mixing antiparticles and particles leads to the annihilation of both, giving rise to high-energy photons (gamma rays) or other particle–antiparticle pairs. Matter and antimatter at all levels of complexity can theoretically annihilate each other, as their constituent subatomic particles come into contact. The end result of antimatter meeting matter is a release of energy proportional to the mass as the mass-energy equivalence equation, E=mc2 shows

Antiparticles are known to bind with each other to form antimatter in the same way that normal particles bind to form normal matter. For example, a positron (the antiparticle of the electron, with symbol e+) and an antiproton (symbol p) can form an antihydrogen atom. In theory, complex antimatter atomic nuclei containing more than one particle are possible, as well as anti-atoms of the same complexity as known chemical elements.

Antimatter, in the form of anti-atoms, is one of the most expensive materials to produce. By contrast, antimatter in the form of individual anti-particles, are commonly produced by particle accelerators, and in some types of radioactive decay.
The Positron:
The positron or anti-electron is the antiparticle or the antimatter counterpart of the electron. The positron has an
electric charge of +1e, a spin of ½, and has the same mass as an electron. When a low-energy positron collides with a low-energy electron, annihilation occurs, resulting in the production of two or more gamma ray photons (see electron–positron annihilation).
Positrons may be generated by positron emission radioactive decay (through weak interactions), or by pair production from a sufficiently energetic photon.

anderson-positron2.jpg


Cloud chamber photograph by C. D. Anderson of the first positron ever identified. A 6 mm lead plate separates the upper half of the chamber from the lower half. The positron must have come from below since the upper track is bent more strongly in the magnetic field indicating a lower energy.

Composition Elementary particle
Statistics Fermionic
Generation First
Interactions Gravity, Electromagnetic, Weak
Symbol β+, e+
Antiparticle Electron
Theorized Paul Dirac (1928)
Discovered Carl D. Anderson (1932)
Spin 1⁄2
Mass:
9.10938215(45)×10−31 kg[1]
5.4857990943(23)×10−4 u[1]
[1,822.88850204(77)]−1 u[note 1]
0.510998910(13) MeV/c2[1]
Electric charge +1 e
1.602176487(40)×10−19 C[1]
 

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