Physics, Matter | featured news

That wonder molecule of life on Earth, DNA, is now being enlisted in the search for an exotic species zooming through the cosmos: dark matter... As far back as the 1930s, astronomers watching distant galaxies saw that something was missing: There were not enough stars to account for the heavy gravity needed to whirl galaxies so quickly or smash them together so swiftly.

The mysterious substance may not be needed, according to a new theory of gravitational interactions between matter and antimatter.

The seemingly inescapable fact that matter and antimatter particles destroy each other on contact has long puzzled physicists wondering how life, the universe or anything else can exist at all. But new results from a particle accelerator experiment suggest that matter does seem to win in the end.