by Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Senior Writer

Date: 14 July 2011 Time: 08:42 PM ET

The spinning of a massive body like a galaxy bends and warps space-time according to the rules of general relativity. CREDIT: University of Warwick

The puzzling prevalence of matter over antimatter in the universe might be related to the bizarre space-time stretching caused by our galaxy’s spin, a new study suggests.

Antimatter is a strange cousin to the stuff that makes up galaxies, stars and us. For every matter particle there is thought to exist an antimatter partner with the same mass but opposite charge. When matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate, converting their mass into energy in a powerful explosion.

Though the universe today is almost completely made of matter, scientists don’t understand why. The Big Bang that created the cosmos 13.7 billion years ago should have produced equal parts matter and antimatter, which would have annihilated, leaving the universe barren of either. Luckily, it didn’t (hence the Earth and the life it supports are here).

to read more, go to:    http://www.livescience.com/15063-antimatter-asymmetry-galaxy-spinning.html