For the first time, join us on Facebook for a live behind-the-scenes insight into CERN’s Antiproton Decelerator.

Unlike the rest of CERN’s accelerator complex, which speed up particles to study them at high energies, this unique machine slows particles down. The decelerator tames these unruly particles and directs them to six different experiments, ALPHA, ASACUSA, ATRAP, BASE, AEGIS and GBAR. to study antimatter and ‘create’ antiatoms.

The Big Bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the early universe. But today, everything we see from the smallest life forms on Earth to the largest stellar objects is made almost entirely of matter. Comparatively, there is not much antimatter to be found. Something must have happened to tip the balance. One of the greatest challenges in physics is to figure out what happened to the antimatter, or why we see an asymmetry between matter and antimatter.

Join us on Thursday 26 April 2018 at 4pm (CEST) on Facebook [link] live from this antimatter factory, where our scientists and machine experts will be available to answer any questions that you might have.

We’ll find out why CERN is now the only lab in the world producing antimatter, how we create these antimatter particles and what these experiments will teach us about our Universe.

Watch the live on Facebook or below, from 4pm.