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Asked by cancer to Nick, Alan, Francesca, Deepak on 12 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by dramaalpacca, .
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Alan Fitzsimmons answered on 12 Mar 2014:
We don’t know really what dark matter is! It is stuff out in the Universe that does not emit light like stars. We know it is there, because we can see it pulling on stars and galaxies with gravity, but our telescopes can’t detect anything. Scientists think it is clouds of some type of particle, but we don’t know what the particle is.
Normal types of matter can be charged. Anti-matter is the same as normal matter but with the opposite charge. So in atoms we have particles called electrons, and these have negative charge. In experiments we can create anti-electrons called positrons, which have positive charge.
Anti-matter is famous because it was predicted by scientists doing calculations, before it was first seen in a laboratory. We now know that all charged particles have antiparticles, and particle acelerators like the LHC can make lots of antiparticles every day.
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Nick Wright answered on 13 Mar 2014:
We don’t know what dark matter is, but we can tell it exists because we can see it pulling on other things like stars and galaxies. There are experiments going on to try and detect dark matter, so one day soon we might be able to work out what its made of!
Anti matter is different to dark matter, in fact its different to all types of matter like you and me because it has the opposite charge – maybe somewhere out there there could be anti-matter versions of you and me – wouldn’t that be cool?
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Francesca Day answered on 14 Mar 2014:
Dark matter is very mysterious! From looking at how the stars move, we know there must be lots more matter in the universe than we can actually see. But we have no idea what it is! Lot of scientists have different theories about the identity of dark matter, and this is one of the things my research is trying to find out.
Anti-matter is something completely different – it is like an opposing twin to matter. For example, the anti-particle of an electron is called a position. The position has exactly the same mass as the electron, but opposite charge. The electron is negatively charge, so the position is positively charged.
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