The Heart of the Antimatter

The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry

• Episode: The Heart of the Antimatter
• Website: The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry
• Feed URL: http://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/b07dx75g.rss
• Duration: 00:31:50
• Published: 2019-11-15 07:00

"How do you make antimatter?' asks Scott Matheson, aged 21 from Utah.

The team takes charge of this question with a spin through the history of antimatter. Adam talks to physicist Frank Close, author of 'Antimatter', about its origins in the equations of Dirac to its manufacture in the first particle accelerator, the Bevatron.

Cosmologist Andrew Pontzen tells Hannah why physicists today are busy pondering the mystery of the missing antimatter. Anyone who discovers why the Universe is made of matter, rather than antimatter, is in line for the Nobel Prize.

Plus, neuroscientist Sophie Scott describes how antimatter has been put to good use down here on Earth to peer into people's brains.

Presenters: Hannah Fry, Adam Rutherford Producer: Michelle Martin

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2019.