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Saturday, July 16, 2011

Anti-matter may put the spin on our (and everyone else's) galaxy

The puzzling prevalence of matter over antimatter in the universe might be related to the bizarre space-time stretching caused by our galaxy's spin, a new study suggests.

Antimatter is a strange cousin to the stuff that makes up galaxies, stars and us. For every matter particle there is thought to exist an antimatter partner with the same mass but opposite charge. When matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate, converting their mass into energy in a powerful explosion.

Though the universe today is almost completely made of matter, scientists don't understand why. The Big Bang that created the cosmos 13.7 billion years ago should have produced equal parts matter and antimatter, which would have annihilated, leaving the universe barren of either. Luckily, it didn't.

The entire article is at Space.com

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