2024-08-06 19:43:29
Observing antimatter in cosmic rays is one of the main goals of the AMS-02 (Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer) detector installed on the International Space Station (ISS), led by Samuel Ting, Nobel Prize winner in Physics. 1976. In 2023, we see about 3.9 million positrons and about 1.1 million antiprotons. Without any official trace of antihelium, anticarbon or antioxygen (clue; PDF). However, since 2016, Ting has shown in all his speeches that the unauthorized brands of antihelium, both antihelium-3 and antihelium-4. But these signs need confirmation from the future AMS-02.2 update, which should be installed on the ISS in 2026. Despite this, for many scientists, the idea that the signs are invalid The order of antihelium is very thick. That’s why you will have read recent news like Alberto Milo, “Antimatter was discovered on the International Space Station and new theories began to develop”. National Geographic, February 2, 2024; José Manuel Nieves, “Strange antimatter particles captured on Space Station baffle scientists,” ABC, day 04, year 2024; Jorge Garay, “No one knows where the antimatter near Earth comes from, but the bold hypothesis points to dark matter,” Wired.com, 05 December 2024; among many. Sorry, but all these headlines are completely false. AMS-02 did not detect antihelium. Label. There is only one new theoretical article that has been published Physical review D about the new big data, another among many published since 2016, for the clues mentioned by Ting in his words. But don’t believe the headlines, antihelium has never been found. Until 2030, at the earliest, it will not be known whether AMS-02.2 confirms or refutes the current evidence.
Relevant references point to about 9 antihelions at the beginning of 2022, observed at the rate of one year (so now it will be about 10). It was first announced by Ting in 2016 [indico; PDF] with a charge of -2 and a mass of 2.96 ± 0.33 GeV/c², which refers to antihelium-3; Its linear mass is 40.3 ± 2.9 GeV/c, which means a speed of 0.9973 ± 0.0005 c (speed of light in vacuum). The problem is that the signal-to-noise ratio is too low to confirm a stable detection (all detectors show spurious signals). In 2019 eight have been announced [indico; PDF]including one with a charge of -2.05 ± 0.05 and a mass of 3.81 ± 0.29 GeV/c², which refers to antihelium-4.
In February 2022 it was announced that there were already nine [indico; PDF], showing a figure with the energy range of nine candidates between 2 and 5 GeV/c². These are the only events that AMS-02 has detected with masses between 0 and 10 GeV/c². As you can see in the figure, in addition to the previous two events with ≈ 3 GeV/c² (anti-He-3) and ≈ 4 GeV/c² (anti-He-4) there are two between 2 and 3 GeV/ c² (probably anti-He-3), three between 3 and 4 GeV/c² (it is impossible to know whether they are anti-He-3 or anti-He-4), and two between 4 and 5 GeV/c² ( maybe anti -He-4). But it is impossible to rule that these are instrumental errors, amazing observations from the detectors that occur once in every hundred million helium-type events (He-3 or He-4). With such a low anti-helium estimate, the only thing we can say is that we have to wait for about three years of data collection from the future AMS-02.2 update, which has been designed, among other things, to know if these elephant They are standing.
Until the signal by AMS-02 is confirmed, all the potential information is shots in the air to see if the rabbit falls. The new work has received echo for its interesting title, “fireball-type antinucleosynthesis”, but it proposes a hypothesis that is too big, and unreasonable. Nuclear physics beyond the standard model is proposed that produces a large number of antiquarks during primary nucleosynthesis, giving rise to antinucleosynthesis that will produce an excess of antihelium-4 and antihelium-3 nuclei. As a novelty, a ~2∶1 ratio between anti-He-3 and anti-He-4 is predicted. Unfortunately for these scientists, as I showed you in the AMS-02 spectrum, there is no indication that there is twice as much anti-He-3 as anti-He-4 (views of hypothetical AMS-02 findings ). 02 refers to a value ∼1∶1). So, obviously, I recommend reading the new article only if you like science fiction with big plots and eye-catching titles; in that case you will enjoy Michael A. Fedderke, David E. Kaplan, …, Erwin H. Tanin, “Fireball antinucleosynthesis,” Phys. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.109.123028, arXiv: 2402.15581 [hep-ph] (February 23, 2024). However there are many more interesting articles on cosmic rays in the recent literature.
#antihelions #observed #AMS02 #ISS