Where has all the antimatter gone?
VELO seeks the answer Scientists from the Universities of Liverpool and Glasgow have completed work on the inner heart of an experiment which seeks to find out what has happened to all the antimatter created at the start of the Universe. Matter and antimatter were created in equal amounts in the Big Bang but somehow the antimatter disappeared resulting in the Universe, and everything in it, including ourselves, being made of the remaining matter. The final modules of the VErtex LOcator (VELO), a precision silicon detector, have been delivered to CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva. Once assembled VELO will be installed into the LHCb detector, one of four experiments, which make up the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator, which is due to be switched on in November this year. LHCb is designed to investigate the subtle differences between matter and antimatter in particles containing b (beauty) quarks. The VELO is an essential part of the experiment which
