By Bonnie James
Qatar is to have a very high presence at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, apart from the distinction of being the only country from the Middle East to collaborate with one of the world’s largest centres for scientific research.
Qatar University’s physics department is representing the country in the AEGIS (Antimatter Experiment: Gravity, Interferometry, Spectroscopy), which aims to measure the effect of gravity on antimatter.
CERN is in the news currently on account of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a multi-billion dollar machine designed to shed light on the “Big Bang” which scientists say gave birth to the universe.
Antimatter is made by combining anti-protons and positrons (the antimatter counterpart to electrons) into the simplest atom of neutral antimatter - anti-hydrogen.
“With Qatar University we are trying to start a collaboration to work on antimatter, on anti-hydrogen,” CERN’s senior scientist Dr Lars Jorgensen told Gulf Times.
The expert, who has worked on antimatter for almost two decades and participated in most of the key milestones in anti-hydrogen research, was in Qatar recently.
AEGIS, supposed to take beam in 2011, will try to measure the gravitational interaction of anti-hydrogen, to basically find out whether it falls up or down.
“It is just trying to understand more about why there is matter in the universe and no antimatter. Theory says there should have been equal amounts, but there are not, we know that from astronomy, so we are interested in trying to find out why,” Dr Jorgensen stated.
The expert clarified that the main reason for CERN’s collaboration with Qatar University is the expertise of Prof Ilham Y al-Qaradawi in positrons which is the antimatter counterpart to the electron.
Prof al-Qaradawi, who has been doing research in positron physics for many years and responsible for building the first positron beam in the Middle East, started collaborating with CERN a couple of years ago.
“QU’s physics department will be responsible for the positron trap for AEGIS,” pointed out Dr Jorgensen, a key member of the ATHENA experiment in 2002, wherein cold anti-hydrogen was first made at CERN.
The atoms have to be made at very low temperatures in order to be able to study their behaviour. Thus the central part of the AEGIS needs to be cooled to 0.1 degree C above the absolute zero temperature of -273 C to make cold anti-hydrogen.
“CERN is presently the only place in the world where you can get the other constituent of anti-hydrogen, which is the anti-proton,” Dr Jorgensen said.
QU’s Physics Department will hopefully be doing the positron accumulator, for AEGIS, to collect the positrons to let them afterwards interact with the anti-protons and form anti-hydrogen, according to Prof
al-Qaradawi. |
