Question Sheet: The Mirror Universe of Antimatter

By Science News Explores

SCIENCE

Before reading:

  1. What are the three main parts of an atom?

  2. What are some examples of matter?

  3. What is the Big Bang theory?

During reading:

  1. What is antimatter?

  2. What is the difference between an electron and a proton? How is a positron different from each of these particles?

  3. How do scientists make antiparticles?

  4. Why would it take billions of years to produce 1 gram of antihydrogen with the current method?

  5. What happens when matter meets antimatter?

  6. Why do scientists think that the Big Bang produced more matter than antimatter in our universe?

  7. Why is to so difficult to store antimatter?

After reading:

  1. Based on information within the article, offer a hypothesis of how the universe began. Be sure to make note of gaps, or unresolved questions, that scientists still have not been able to answer.

  2. Why is Rolf Landua hoping to discover anti-stars and antigalaxies? What possibilities might such discoveries offer scientists?

LANGUAGE ARTS

  1. Follow the link to the CERN antimatter home page. Write a review of the site.

    Be sure to describe what kinds of information are available there, and how easy

    or difficult it is to navigate. Do you have questions about antimatter that the

    site didn’t answer?

  2. Many books or movies use fictional ideas of antimatter. Choose one of the

    following activities:

    a. Take one of these stories and update its plot using the scientific notion of antimatter that you have learned.

    OR

    b. Construct a science fiction story using realistic ideas of antimatter.

  3. From the description you have read of the machine that CERN uses to produce antiparticles, draw a diagram showing the process. Label each of the parts.

MATHEMATICS

CERN scientists have produced 1 billionth of a gram of antihydrogen over 10 years. What is CERN’s average yearly production of antihydrogen? How much antihydrogen would the team need to produce annually to have a gram of it by 2013? 2008?