Episode 20: What is Antimatter and Why Does it Matter to Us?

Meet the Expert: Dr.  Chloé Malbrunot, particle physicist

Dr. Malbrunot is  a physicist working at CERN which is the largest international physics laboratory in the world. It hosts the Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful machine accelerating protons to the highest energies humankind ever achieved. She works on the low energy side on the laboratory. There we collect protons which have been accelerated (but not to the energies of the LHC) to hit a target, and then she collects the antiprotons produced. The antiprotons are  then decelerated (slowed down) and used them to make antihydrogen atoms (the simplest atom made entirely of antimatter and the only antimatter atom produced in a laboratory so far). She is studying  very precisely in the hope to bring clues to one of the big mystery of contemporary physics: why has antimatter disappeared from the universe? Having produced antihydrogen we can do many exiting things with them. Dr. Malbrunot is working on two experiments which respectively aim at interrogating antihydrogen with light and observing its behaviour in the Earth’s gravitational field. Before joining CERN she completed her PhD in TRIUMF, Canada’s National Laboratory for Nuclear and Particle Physics (Vancouver, BC)

The Antimatter Factory at CERN

Dr. Malbrunot working in the Antimatter Factory

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHAT IS CERN? 

CERN or The European Organization for Nuclear Research  is a European research organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Their mission? To discover–> What is the universe made of?

 

 

Dr. Malbrunot’s work focuses on Antimatter, which is the opposite of matter. Antimatter is not stable and requires special circumstances to be created and held here on Earth. Check out this video from Dr. Brian Greene creator of the World Science Festival to learn more.

 

 

Listen to Dr. Malbrunot’s TED Ed talk on Antimatter and Matter. 

 

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Challenge:

Go out and look at everyday things, think about the physics and how you encounter anti-matter in your daily life.

Draw a picture or make a list of things you find.

With your parents permission, send us your picture via email at podcast@solveitforkids.com OR

tag us on our Twitter or Instagram account @kidssolve

If you send in your challenge OR just leave a comment below about the episode, you will be entered into a giveaway to win a FREE copy of the book listed below.

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Highlighted book for this episode!

Particle Physics: Brick by Brick  by Dr. Ben Still, PhD (Firefly Books)

 

A simple and entertaining introduction to the building blocks of the universe.

In 2014 the Lego® Group sold 62 billion Lego® pieces. That’s 102 Lego® bricks for every person in the world. That’s nothing however to the estimated seven billion billion billion atoms that make up each of us, let alone the between ten quadrillion vigintillion and one-hundred thousand quadrillion vigintillion atoms in the known observable universe.

 

 

 

Book List

Explore Atoms and Molecules!: With 25 Great Projects by Janet Slingerland (Nomad Press)

Albert Einstein and Relativity for Kids: His Life and Ideas with 21 Activities and Thought Experiments by Jerome Pohlen (Chicago Review Press)

Astrophysics for Young People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson (Author), Gregory Mone (Contributor)  (Norton Young Readers)

A Black Hole is Not a Hole by Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano (Charlesbridge Publishing)

 

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