Heaviest Antimatter Found; Made in U.S. Atom Smasher
Finding new particles "like stamp collecting," expert says.
Dubbed the antihypertriton, the newfound antimatter is the heaviest yet detected. What's more, it's the first type of particle that contains what's called an antistrange quark, which puts the antihypertriton in a new plane on the periodic table of elements.
(Related: "Element 118 Created, This Time for Real, Scientists Say.")
Scientists created the new antimatter last spring using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. The collider sends heavy ions—atoms that have had their electrons removed—careening into each other at near light speed so that the atoms break into their component particles.
After smashing together gold ions more than a
