Transform smartphones sensors into an antimatter chamber

One of the reasons why Antimatter is so interesting Not only for particle physicists, but also for the people to whom we are passionate about science, is that the tools we have They still do not allow us to understand what role he played in The origin of the universe. However, the enigma does not end here; Nor do we know what laws govern the faint line that delimits the imbalance between matter and antimatter in the cosmos.

Before moving forward, we are worth stopping for a time to briefly review what antimatter is and what makes it so peculiar. Actually, it is nothing more than a form of matter constituted by antiparticles, which are particles with the same mass and spin as the particles with which we are familiar, but with opposite electric charge. In this way the antiparticle of the electron is the positron or antielectron. And the proton antiparticle is the antiproton.

The antimatter has a surprising property: when they come into direct contact with the matter, both are annihilated, releasing a large amount of energy in the form of high-energy photons, as well as other possible particle-antiparticle pairs. It is currently being studied in much of the research centers specialized in physics of most important particles in the world in the hope that knowing it better helps us understand some of the mysteries of the cosmos that remain out of our reach.

The AEGIS experiment demonstrates how ingenious particles are physicists

The sensors of the cameras of our mobile phones are very valuable when it comes to unraveling the mysteries of the antimatter. This a priori statement may seem strange, but it is reliable. And is that a team of researchers from the Technical University of Munich (Germany) who works side by side with scientists from the Cern (European Organization for Nuclear Research) has designed an experiment that, precisely, resorts to this strategy. It’s called aegis (Antimatter Experiment: Gravity, Interferometry, Spectroscopy or ‘Antimatter experiment: gravity, interferometry, spectroscopy’) and is extraordinarily ingenious.

In the cover photography of this article we can see what the device they have built. Broadly the purpose of this experiment is to study the interaction between gravity and antihydrogen, which is a form of antimatter, to verify if the latter behaves before gravity in the same way as ordinary matter. As we can deduce from its name, it resorts to interferometry and spectroscopy techniques to carry out its objective, but the most surprising thing is that the detector uses modified sensors of camera photo cameras to identify in real time the points in which the antimatter and the subject are annihilated.

“For AEGIS to work properly we need a detector with an incredibly high spatial resolution. And the smartphones camera sensors have pixels of less than 1 micrometer,” Francesco Guatieri explainedmain investigator of the experiment. “We have integrated 60 camera sensors in our detector, which allows you to reach a resolution of 3,840 megapixels, the largest amount of pixels of any image detector to date.” It is spectacular. Let us trust that Aegis fulfills its mission and these scientists manage to understand a little better how the interaction between antimatter and gravity is.

Image | Cern

More information | Cern

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