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Chinanews.com, Beijing, August 21 (Reporter Sun Zifa) What causes the difference in the amount of positive and negative matter in the universe? To answer this unresolved question, an important idea is to create new antimatter in the laboratory and study its properties.

The latest news from the Chinese Academy of Sciences says that the team of Researcher Qiu Hao from the Institute of Modern Physics of the Academy and others recently observed for the first time a new antimatter hypernucleus - anti-hyperhydrogen-4 - in relativistic heavy ion gold-gold collisions while participating in the RHIC-STAR international collaborative experiment. This is also the heaviest antimatter hypernucleus discovered experimentally to date.

Schematic diagram of the production of antimatter superhydrogen-4 by heavy ion collision. Photo courtesy of Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

This important research discovery in the field of antimatter research and related results papers were published online in the internationally renowned academic journal Nature on the evening of August 21, Beijing time.

Current knowledge of physics holds that the properties of matter and antimatter are symmetrical, and that equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have existed at the beginning of the universe. However, some mysterious physical mechanism led to a very small asymmetry in the amount of matter and antimatter in the early universe. After most of the matter and antimatter were annihilated, only about one in ten billion of matter survived, forming today's material world and becoming the foundation for the birth and existence of human civilization.