Antimatter stars may lurk in the solar system’s neighbourhood

There could be several stars made of antimatter in our solar system’s neighbourhood. There have been small hints that these strange and unlikely objects, called antistars, could exist, and a search for the gamma rays that they are expected to produce has turned up 14 candidates.

When matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate in a shower of radiation, including high-energy gamma rays. This is expected to happen fairly often at the surfaces of antistars – if they exist – as regular matter falls onto them.

Simon Dupourqué…