Science fiction fans will know that antimatter is known to power the engines of the Starship Enterprise – with the theory based on physics’ ‘rule of symmetry’, which states there should be an equal amount of matter and antimatter in the universe.
In reality, however, antimatter is in scarce supply and scientists at University of the West of Scotland (UWS) have discovered why – and it’s all thanks to pear shaped nuclei.
Dr Marcus Scheck at UWS and Prof Peter A Butler of the University of Liverpool led an initial project that discovered the ‘pear-shape’ in the nucleus Radium-224. A new study to repeat the experiment in another nucleus, Barium-144, has confirmed the initial experiment’s finding – and the observation could change the way we understand everything around us.
Dr Scheck said: “Up until now, we have relied on the rule of symmetry to explain the universe, which meant nuclei would be either spherical, rugby-ball or discus shaped. This would also state that, for every particle of matter, there must be an equal amount of antimatter.
“When antimatter meets with matter, the mass of the particles combine and convert into radiation. That is the process that drives the Enterprise’s engines to work. If there were equal amounts of antimatter and matter then, quite simply, we wouldn’t exist.
“Further, the protons enrich in the bump of the pear and create a specific charge distribution in the nucleus, which shouldn’t be there according to our currently accepted model of physics. This violates the theory of mirror symmetry and relates to the violation shown in the distribution of matter and antimatter in our universe.”
The study, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, points towards answers for the last major problem remaining in our current model of physics following discovery of the Higgs Boson – why is there more matter than antimatter in the universe?
However, the discovery could spell the end for other science fiction theories – most notably time travel.
Dr Scheck added: “We’ve found these nuclei literally ‘point’ towards a direction in space. This relates to a direction in time, proving there’s a well-defined direction in time and we will always travel from past to present.”
The latest study was led by Ching-Yen Yu, a scientist from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Berkeley, California. Dr Scheck and his PhD student, ET Gregor, were members of his team.
Dr Scheck will now lead a team to repeat the experiment to verify the scale of distortion, with the shape measured in Barium-144 more pronounced than initially expected.
Dr Scheck concludes: “Once confirmed, together with the results from our previous study showing Radium-224 also adopts this pear shape, many physics textbooks have to be rewritten.”
The next experiments will be performed at the ISOLDE facility at CERN, which can produce the radioactive Barium-144 nuclei in an unrivalled amount. It’ll be performed by same team of scientists from the UK, US, France, Germany, Belgium, Finland, Switzerland, Spain, Poland, and Sweden that reliably proved Radium-224 adopts this pear shape.