RHIC creates the biggest antinucleus

As reported by

Interactions.ORG, Article Ant, and Phys Org,

the STAR detector at Brookhaven's RHIC has detected the largest antinucleus that's been seen as of today.



It's also the first antinucleus they produced that contains a strange antiquark. Because of its presence, we talk about "hypernuclei". The precise composition of the antinucleus was

antiproton (u*u*d*), antineutron (u*d*d*), antiLambda (u*d*s)

Because the strange quark is a heavier cousin of the down quark, the Lambda hyperon is a heavier (or stranger, or hyper) brother of the neutron. So the whole antinucleus can be called a heavier (or strange) sister of the antitritium nucleus - or "anti-hypertriton" for short. ;-)




They will surely continue to play similar childish games. But it must be fun. ;-) They say that the findings are relevant for the physics of neutron stars but it's not quite clear what exactly they can learn what is not yet known.

Yesterday, Softpedia also wrote about the creation of quark-gluon plasma by the RHIC.