Scientists capture elusive antimatter
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November 18, 2010 |
I first learned about antimatter a few years back when I worked at CERN in Switzerland. Antimatter tends to vanish as soon as you’ve made it, so it’s almost impossible to study.
Today, physicists at CERN report that they’ve trapped an atom of antimatter for a fraction of a second, which means they could finally examine it in detail. One of the biggest scientific mysteries is why there doesn’t seem to be any antimatter in our universe – a question scientists might now be able to answer.
This research appears in the 18 November 2010 issue of the journal Nature.
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An antimatter trap. Antimatter is identical to matter, except that everything in its atoms is a kind of opposite version
Image: N. Madsen, ALPHA
Graham Moore
really cool stuff happening in science today.
Louis
Just read a good article on antimatter on the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/19/antimatter-cern-antihydrogen