MEXICO: Using powerful lasers, scientists have created trillions of positrons particles of antimatter opening the way for a better understanding of intense astrophysical processes like gamma-ray bursts and black holes.
Positrons, or “anti-electrons,” have the identical mass as an electron but have the opposite charge, and creation of energetic pairs of electrons and positrons are seen in phenomena such as the rapid collapse of stars and the formation of black holes, according to researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
The pairs eventually give up their energy in gamma-ray bursts, the most extreme electromagnetic occurrences witnessed in the universe, but the exact mechanism by which these bursts are formed is as yet not fully understood, notes LLNL physicist Hui Chen.
In their laboratory, Chen and her colleagues created streams of such electron-positron pairs by shining high-energy laser light onto gold foil, resulting in radiation of such high energy that it created the particle pairs as it interacted with the nuclei of gold atoms in the foil.
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