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The Heart of the Antimatter

Curious CasesSeries 14

How do you make antimatter? Science sleuths Drs Rutherford and Fry investigate. From 2019.

"How do you make antimatter?' asks Scott Matheson, aged 21 from Utah.

The team takes charge of this question with a spin through the history of antimatter. Adam talks to physicist Frank Close, author of 'Antimatter', about its origins in the equations of Dirac to its manufacture in the first particle accelerator, the Bevatron.

Cosmologist Andrew Pontzen tells Hannah why physicists today are busy pondering the mystery of the missing antimatter. Anyone who discovers why the Universe is made of matter, rather than antimatter, is in line for the Nobel Prize.

Plus, neuroscientist Sophie Scott describes how antimatter has been put to good use down here on Earth to peer into people's brains.

Presenters: Hannah Fry, Adam Rutherford
Producer: Michelle Martin

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2019.

Available now

32 minutes

Last on

Thu 10 Mar 202221:45
BBC Radio 4 Extra

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Broadcasts

  • Wed 20 Nov 201909:30
    BBC Radio 4
  • Wed 20 Nov 201920:45
    BBC Radio 4
  • Sat 23 Nov 201905:45
    BBC Radio 4 FM
  • Sun 6 Mar 202210:45
    BBC Radio 4 Extra
  • Sun 6 Mar 202221:45
    BBC Radio 4 Extra
  • Thu 10 Mar 202211:45
    BBC Radio 4 Extra
  • Thu 10 Mar 202221:45
    BBC Radio 4 Extra

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