GREATEST SPACE MYSTERIES

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE, ACCORDING TO ASTROPHYSICISTS, PLANETARY SCIENTISTS AND ASTRONOMERS

-  David Crookes

WHERE DID THE ANTIMATTER GO?

It was destroyed after the Big Bang

Antimatter and matter are supposed to be created in comparable abundance. However, almost all matter observed from Earth seems to be made of matter rather than antimatter. Where did the antimatter go? Antimatter was either destroyed within a second after its creation in the Big Bang, or the Big Bang made antimatter in a distant universe that is far beyond our reach and our visible world happens to be in a matter zone.

The first possibility could be caused by a possible tiny asymmetry between matter and antimatter, and it is being studied by accelerator experiments. The second possibility is being explored by balloon and space-based experiments - a recent famous one is the AMS-02 experiment mounted on the International Space Station. In those experiments, scientists are looking for tiny fragments of primordial antimatter in cosmic rays. Dr Aihong Tang, Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York

WHY DO CRAFT SPEED UP NEAR EARTH?

It may be due to Earth's spin

Possible effects include the atmospheric drag of low-orbit trajectories, ocean and solid tides, charging and magnetic momentum of craft by solar wind, overlooked general relativity phenomena or thermal radiation. Or perhaps it's a strange dark matter halo around Earth. Also perplexing is the phenomena's disappearance in flybys since 2005. Dr Luis Rodríguez Universidad de Extremadura, Spain

CAN LIGHT ESCAPE BLACK HOLES?

Theory says that it can