Everything we see, from galaxies to capybaras, is made of matter. But matter has a mirrored version of itself known as antimatter. If the two come into contact they annihilate one another, turning into pure energy. Why does the universe prefer one over the other? This is a fundamental mystery of the universe, and at the forefront of the search for an answer is the Alpha Experiment at CERN. In this episode, host Dr Alfredo Carpineti is joined by experimental physicist and Alpha spokesperson Professor Jeffrey Hangst to understand the nature of mysterious antimatter.
You can listen to this episode and subscribe to the podcast on all your favorite podcast apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Podbean, Amazon Music, and more. A transcript of the conversation is available here.


![A dense cluster of bright stars, each with six large and two small diffraction spikes, due to the telescope’s optics. They have a variety of sizes depending on their brightness and distance from us in the cluster, and different colours reflecting different types of star. Patches of billowing red gas can be seen in and around the cluster, lit up by the stars. Small stars in the cluster blend into a background of distant stars and galaxies on black.]](https://assets.iflscience.com/assets/articleNo/77446/aImg/81193/glittering-m.jpg)

