Scientists have calculated how many stars in our galaxy can be composed of antimatter

After processing the data obtained from the Fermi gamma-ray telescope, astrophysicists from France calculated the upper limit of the number anti-stars (stars that are composed of antimatter) that may well exist in our swami galaxy - the Milky Way.

And also identified for themselves 14 sources of gamma radiation, which can be anti-stars. Now I will tell you about this unusual work of scientists.

Modern theory and antimatter

So, according to modern theory, literally immediately after the Big Bang, matter and antimatter appeared, which interacted with each other, as a result of which they mutually destroyed (annihilated), thus giving rise to a relict radiation.

But as scientists assume, from the very beginning, matter turned out to be one billionth part more than antimatter. And after mutual annihilation, it was this small part of the substance that allowed the formation of all the galaxies of our Universe.

But some scientists believe that non-annihilated volumes of antimatter could well have survived in our Universe. And purely theoretically, anti-stars and even antigalaxies could well have formed from these clumps over billions of years.

The first confirmation that some of the original antimatter actually survived was a fixation in 2018 magnetic alpha spectrometer AMS-02, fixed on the ISS, among a huge number of helium nuclei of cosmic rays, a couple of nuclei antihelium.

In addition, the space experiments carried out have shown that the primary cosmic rays contain antiprotons, though less than one percent of the total number of registered particles.

Scientific group from Tuzu University under the leadership of S. Dupurquet proposed to use gamma rays to search for anti-stars, which can be formed also during the fall of the usual substances on the surface of anti-stars, as a result of which particles and antiparticles collide and cancel each other, giving rise to a burst radiation.

Of course, pulsars, quasars and gamma-ray bursts can also be sources of gamma radiation in space, but each source has its own characteristic spectrum.

It is for this reason that of the 5787 known gamma-ray sources that have been recorded over the last decade of the Fermi gamma-ray space telescope, scientists have identified those that, in their opinion, are not related to quasars, etc., but belong to a spectrum that is compatible with the spectrum of annihilation of baryons and antibaryons.

So there are 14 such sources. And it was one of them that could be the source of antihelium, recorded by the instrument on the ISS.

By performing computer simulations, scientists have figured out an upper limit on the number of anti-stars that can exist in our galaxy. And it turned out that for two million ordinary stars there can be no more than five stars from antimatter, assuming that matter and antimatter have similar properties.

Even more anti-stars could be outside the Milky Way, where their gamma rays are extremely difficult to detect.

Of course, even the authors of the study themselves, which they shared on the pages of the journal Physical Review D, say that they are not possess any reliable information about the existence of a noticeable amount of antimatter in the Universe and all their conclusions are pure theory. But what will be discovered in the future is unknown.

If you liked the material, please rate it and do not forget to subscribe to the channel. Thank you for your attention!