A subtle difference between matter and antimatter has been observed for the first time by the Large Hadron Collider in an experiment at Cern. Wired.co.uk talks to physicist Professor Tara Shears.
Even if the charismatic Professor Tara Shears laughs at the thought of there ever being enough antimatter in the world to make Star Trek's warp drive a possibility, there is nevertheless something "boldly going" about her as she starts to explain to me the latest antimatter research results to be announced from Cern.
The results come at the start of the "long shutdown" -- two years during which the beam of the Large Hadron Collider is off, allowing it to have a £70m upgrade -- and represent a success story for British science. Professor Shears is one of the leading British scientists at Cern and has recently broken new ground by becoming the first female professor of physics at the University of Liverpool.
"We have now had the very first observations of CP (charged party) violation in Bs mesons," Professor Shears tells me. "This is very exciting, as we expected to see it from our own predictions -- and we did."
To read more, click here.