Everything around us – from our bodies to the stars – is made of matter. But according to our best theories, none of it should exist. The big bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter, and that should have caused the newborn universe to annihilate itself instantly. So why are we here?

In this video, we go behind the scenes at CERN, the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, to explore how scientists create, trap, transport and study antimatter at the appropriately named Antimatter Factory. Is there a tiny, fundamental difference between matter and antimatter? The answer could explain one of the oldest questions in science: Why is there something instead of nothing?

Read more: CERN upgrade: Inside the world’s largest scientific experiment

Particle physics dives into the very depths of the universe – the particles that make up atoms. Over the past century, we have peeled back the layers and uncovered more about the make-up of subatomic particles than ever before, culminating in 2012 with the discovery of the Higgs boson, also called the God particle. Frank Close, the author of Infinity Puzzle and Elusive: How Peter Higgs solved the mystery of mass, has had a front-row seat to many of these revelations. He joins New Scientist reporter Alex Wilkins to talk about his career and all things particle physics, including how quarks group together and what it was like sitting on stage with Peter Higgs after the Large Hadron Collider found that elusive particle.

Read more: Why quantum physics says there’s a multiverse

A new particle has popped into existence at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, a heavier proton-like particle that contains two charm quarks.

Protons and neutrons are examples of a class of particles called baryons, which each contain three fundamental subatomic particles called quarks that come in a variety of so-called flavours. In the case of a proton, there are two “up” quarks and one “down” quark that make up the particle.

But heavier quarks, like those known as charm quarks, can also combine to make baryons. However, because these unusual quark combinations are heavier and so more unstable, they often have fleetingly short lifetimes and quickly decay into other particles.

In 2017, physicists working at CERN’s LHCb experiment glimpsed one of these exotic baryons, memorably named Xi_cc⁺⁺, that was made up of two charm quarks and an up quark. This particle lived for only a trillionth of a second. Now, physicists working on the LHCb experiment have spotted the charm-filled sister particle to Xi_cc⁺⁺, called the Xi_cc⁺particle, which contains a down quark instead of an up, making it a heavier analogue of the proton.

This particle had a predicted lifetime of six times shorter than that of the Xi_cc⁺⁺, making it much harder to detect. It was found only after the LHCb experiment was upgraded to carry out more sensitive particle searches. The finding has a statistical significance of over 7 sigma, a measure that physicists use to state how confident they are that the result isn’t a random fluke, which easily clears the 5-sigma bar required to claim a discovery.

“Not only is it interesting discovering the particle in its own right – the Xi_cc⁺ has been searched for for a long time – but it also really shows the power that these upgrades to the LHC are having,” says at the University of Manchester in the UK. “In one year’s data sample, we were able to see something that we couldn’t see with 10 years of data from the previous generation.”

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Spotting this particle could teach us about how the strong nuclear force, which describes how quarks bind together, glues together heavier quarks than those we see in protons and neutrons, says Parkes. But it also resolves a 20-year-old mystery.

In 2002, physicists working on the SELEX experiment at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois thought that they had that looked very much like Xi_cc⁺, but with a much lower mass than predicted at only a 4.7 sigma level of confidence. “Now we’ve found it, but it’s at a mass which is similar to its partner [Xi_cc⁺⁺] that we found a few years ago, and not at the mass that was predicted by SELEX,” says Parkes. The strength of the new discovery closes the door on the question of this particle’s mass.

“It’s a very interesting measurement, but it’s unclear what we learn from it,” says at Vrije University Amsterdam in the Netherlands. “There is no rule in quantum chromodynamics which prevents this hadron from existing, but now we’ve measured it exists, we are left not particularly illuminated.”

Part of this, says Rojo, is because our current theories don’t predict well how heavier quarks inside baryons should interact or what their masses should be. “The data is now ahead of the theory for these kinds of particles, but it could be that in five years from now, this measurement is able to answer some very important theory questions,” says Rojo, such as what different combinations of quarks mean for particle masses.

CERN and Mont Blanc, dark and frozen matter: Switzerland and France

Prepare to have your mind blown by CERN, Europe's particle physics centre, where researchers operate the famous Large Hadron Collider, nestled near the charming Swiss lakeside city of Geneva.

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