We believe that our universe began
with a big bang. There was an equal
amount of matter and antimatter created.
But if you look at the universe today,
we see a very little amount of antimatter
in the observable universe.
So one of the big mysteries in modern science is
- what happened to antimatter in the universe?
Antimatter is a counterpart part of the matter,
and for every matter particle,
there's antimatter particles. We work
in the Alpha Project, which is
an international project located at CERN,
which is an international laboratory
in Geneva, Switzerland.
And at CERN we studied
what is called antimatter atoms.
And by studying these
antimatter atoms, producing them
and trapping them in a laboratory,
we want to see if there's any
difference in its fundamental
properties, such as, do they shine in
different colours, do they weigh
different between the matter
and antimatter?
According to fundamental laws of
physics, which connect the
quantum physics in Einstein's relativity,
these properties of antimatter
and matter have to be
exactly the same.
So the Alpha Project is an international
project so that groups from different
countries make different contributions,
depending on their expertise.
From Canada, we have several expertise
that are unique within Alpha, and one
is a detector, a particle detector.
So here at TRIUMF, we design
and also build electronics for
particle detectors.
And in order to study antimatter particles,
we had to see - we had to be able
to detect it. And so we have constructed
sophisticated electronics here at
the TRIUMF Laboratory and
then brought it to CERN.
CERN Laboratory is the only place
in the world which can produce
antimatter particles right now,
so that's why we go there
from Canada to participate in
this international project.
One of the recent results that Alpha
has been able to achieve is
to study the internal structure of
antimatter atom for the first time.
Nobody had seen what the internal
structure is of antimatter atoms.
And using microwave techniques
developed here in Vancouver,
was Professor - by Professor Hardy
and Professor Hayden of UBC
and SFU, we've been able
to demonstrate the first
microwave spectroscopy experiment
on antimatter atoms.
Without NSERC support, we couldn't
have done any of this research.
