CERN Announces Exciting Antimatter Breakthrough

CERN annnounced they have successfully trapped antyhydrogen atoms. Photo by CERN

A special CERN experiment, entitled ALPHA has successfully trapped atoms of antihydrogene, thus coming one step closer to determining the nature of the mysterious antimatter.

The antihydrogen atoms were produced in a vacuum at CERN. Unlike their "material" counterparts, they possess an antiproton instead of a proton and a positron instead of an electron.

Antihydrogen atoms have a very low life expectancy, as they are surrounded by normal matter. Matter and antimatter annihilate each other when they meet.

Antimatter remains one of the most captivating mysteries of science. Matter and its counterpart are identical, except for having an opposite charge.

At the Big Bang, matter and antimatter should have been produced in equal amounts, but for some reason, the world as we know it is composed solely of matter.

"For reasons that no one yet understands, nature ruled out antimatter. It is thus very rewarding, and a bit overwhelming, to look at the ALPHA device and know that it contains stable, neutral atoms of antimatter," Jeffrey Hangst of Aarhus University, Denmark, spokesman of the ALPHA collaboration, explained.

"These are significant steps in antimatter research," said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer, "and an important part of the very broad research program at CERN."

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