As Dan Brown's new sci-fi thriller Angels and Demons, which deals with subject of antimatter, tops China's bestseller lists, a project to search for the existence of the mysterious substance among primary cosmic rays has been officially launched in China.

In Southeast University in Nanjing, capital of eastern Jiangsu Province, the Thursday formal operation of China's sole laboratory with an AMS (Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer) detector, called AMS-C, marked a significant move forward in China's search for antimatter.

"During the trial period, the AMS lab has detected signs of energetic particles from outer space which can help our understanding of the mysteries of astrophysics," said Nobel Laureate physicist Samuel Chao Chang Ting, who leads the international AMS experiment.