Ghost particles are blasting through you. Can they solve an antimatter mystery?

By Berly McCoy,

Regina G. Barber, Rebecca Ramirez

Published September 24, 2024 at 9:04 AM EDT

Matter and its weird, opposite antimatter annihilate each other "in a blaze of glory," says Jessica Esquivel, an experimental particle physicist at Fermilab.

At the beginning of the universe, annihilation reigned supreme. Equal amounts of matter and antimatter collided. There should have been nothing left. And, yet, here we all are. Matter won out. The question is: why? Scientists are probing the mysteries of a ghostly subatomic particle for answers. To do it, they'll need to shoot a beam of them 800 miles underground.

Interested in more mysteries of the universe? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.

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This episode was produced by Berly McCoy, edited by Rebecca Ramirez and fact checked by Regina G. Barber, Rachel Carlson and Berly. Maggie Luthar was the audio engineer.