'Angel particle’ which is both matter and anti-matter discovered

When the Big Bang created the universe out of nothing, scientists believe the explosion created equal amounts of matter and anti-matter.

And, if they were ever to meet, they would annihilate each other – returning to ‘nothing’ apart from a burst of energy.

However, in 1937 an Italian theoretical physicist, Ettore Majorana, predicted the existence of a strange class of particles called fermions that were their own anti-particles.

And now, in an article in the prestigious journal Science, researchers report they have found the first evidence of just such an object, which they dubbed the “Angel Particle” after Dan Brown’s thriller Angels and Demons which involves a bomb made from a combination of matter and anti-matter.

Professor Shoucheng Zhang, a Standford University physicist who proposed how an experiment to find the particle could be carried out, said: “Our team predicted exactly where to find the Majorana fermion and what to look for as its ‘smoking gun’ experimental signature.

Source: Duta

UCJ, UNILORIN.