This facility will delve into the deepest mysteries of matter and antimatter in our universe. In the final analysis, perhaps many years hence, this facility will help us understand our complete nature. Very often we celebrate the research of the university, and its teaching, when we see our students go on to do great things. Indeed, Stanford has many, many achievements of that kind to celebrate. The basic question that the B Factory is designed to explore is the difference between matter and antimatter.
Antimatter is the electrical mirror image of regular matter.
Where an electron has a negative electrical charge, its antiparticle, the positron, has a positive electrical charge. Otherwise the two particles are identical. Every regular particle possesses an antiparticle. When a particle and its antiparticle collide, they disappear in a flash of pure energy. The discovery of antimatter raised the question of why the universe appears to be almost entirely made up of regular matter, containing little if any antimatter.