[Roy Bovenistier]

Roy Bovenistier  asked the Naked Scientists:
   
Hello
 
My name is Roy . I am a plumber from Belgium and I have a burning question.

Here goes:
 
As I understand matter and antimatter should be formed in equal amounts when the universe was formed. The antimatter isn't seen but the matter is. Could it be that the antimatter is dark matter, and/or, dark energy  ??
 
Just a thought I had in the bath.

What do you think?

[graham.d]

Hi Roy. The properties that we observe for dark matter would not fit with the properties that we know of antimatter (except, perhaps, for certain antiparticles like an anti-neutrino - though this is very speculative). Dark matter does not seem to interact with normal matter very much whereas anti matter does, usually with a large energy release.

Dark energy is even more mysterious in that nobody really knows what it is, or if it is that we are observing some phenomenon resulting from some law of physics we have yet to discover. Again, it would not fit with it being simply anti-matter because anti-matter behaves in the same way as matter, gravitationally, so would not explain the apparant accelerating expansion of the universe.