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Age of Cosmic Rays and Abundance of Antimatter in the Galaxy

Abstract

IT is more or less accepted that there is no evidence to rule out the existence of antimatter in the galaxy. Alfven and Elvius have argued1 from symmetry that the galaxy should contain 50 per cent matter and 50 per cent antimatter separated into irregular concentrations of each kind of matter. Burbidge and Hoyle2 limited the average density ratio of antimatter to matter to 10−7 by a thermodynamic argument that the energy density of electrons and positrons produced in annihilation should not exceed the energy density of the galactic magnetic field. Their limit is not applicable if matter and antimatter have separated from each other into large fairly pure masses of 1 kpc dimension, because annihilation could then take place only rarely and only at the boundaries between such masses.

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LIBBY, L. Age of Cosmic Rays and Abundance of Antimatter in the Galaxy. Nature 225, 166–167 (1970). https://doi.org/10.1038/225166a0

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