New particle resembling Higgs boson found

Trio win physics Nobel for studying universe's expansion

Three US scientists who discovered that our Universe's expansion is accelerating have been awarded this year's Nobel prize for physics. Saul Perlmutter of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ofUniversity of California, Brian P Schmidt of Australian National University, and Adam G Riess of Johns Hopkins University and senior member of Science staff at Space Telescope Science Institute, both in Baltimore, will share the prize money of US $1.5 million.

Where is antimatter?

JUST after the Big Bang, about 14 billion years ago, the universe was packed with equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Antimatter contains the same set of subatomic particles as matter but with opposite charges. Protons have antiprotons; neutrons, antineutrons; and electrons, antielectrons. When the two come in contact, they annihilate each other. Scientists do not have a definitive answer to why matter won the war and the universe is composed only of matter. But it is believed a slight asymmetry gave matter an edge over antimatter, knocking it out almost entirely.