Physicists believe they have discovered a particle that is both matter and anti-matter, an idea that was first theorised 80 years ago.
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.
“This discovery concludes one of the most intensive searches in fundamental physics, which spanned exactly 80 years.”
It is thought the existence of fermions could be used to help bring about the technological revolution promised by quantum computers, which are many times more powerful than existing machines.
One problem that has limited their development has been they must be insulated from environmental noise.
It is thought a single qubit, or quantum bit, of information could be stored in two separate Majorana fermions. So even if the interference affected information in one, the other would almost certainly keep it safe.
Other scientists hailed the research as a breakthrough.
“It does seem to be a really clean observation of something new,” said Professor Frank Wilczek, a theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“It’s not fundamentally surprising, because physicists have thought for a long time that Majorana fermions could arise out of the types of materials used in this experiment.
“But they put together several elements that had never been put together before, and engineering things so this new kind of quantum particle can be observed in a clean, robust way is a real milestone.”
And Professor Tom Devereaux, also of Stanford University, said: “This research culminates a chase for many years to find chiral Majorana fermions. It will be a landmark in the field.”
Based on The Independent report.
