The whole unit is small enough to load onto a truck, which could then transport the antimatter to other facilities for more detailed study. The traps would be surrounded by a 1-Tesla superconducting magnet to steady them, while a layer of liquid helium keeps the system cool for long periods of time. The device, called BASE-STEP, would be made up of two Penning traps, one that receives and releases antiprotons and the other to store them for transport. In 2020, CERN detailed a new design for a trap that could be used to move large quantities of antimatter over longer distances. If storing antimatter seems tricky, transporting it is a whole other level of challenge. The current record is storing antiprotons for 405 days.
Using this method, scientists first managed to trap atoms of antihydrogen for a few fractions of a second in 2010, then extended that to over 16 minutes in 2011. Antimatter particles are suspended inside a vacuum chamber by electromagnetic fields, which keeps them away from the sides. So, scientists use what’s called a Penning trap. Part of the difficulty and cost comes from storage, because of course it’s not as easy as just sticking it in a jar, since it will annihilate most containers on contact. This also makes it far and away the most expensive material in the world to make, with scientists estimating that it costs up to US$25 billion per gram. However, it’s a difficult procedure, and as such only a few dozen nanograms have ever been produced artificially. When these pairs are separated, the antimatter can be saved and studied. Scientists at facilities like CERN can create antimatter by smashing certain particles together in an accelerator, which produces showers of matter and antimatter pairs. Antimatter, on the other hand, is extremely rare but has been experimentally confirmed and is the subject of constant study. Dark matter is hypothesized to be spread out all through the universe, and while there’s plenty of evidence that it exists, it still evades direct detection. It might be easy to confuse antimatter with dark matter, but the two are very different. But if somewhere out there, there are creatures made of antimatter living on an antimatter planet, orbiting an antimatter star in an antimatter galaxy (which, by the way, is all theoretically possible) – they’d probably switch the matter and antimatter labels around. Of course antimatter is not inherently “worse” than normal matter – we just define it as “anti” because it’s the inverse to the stuff we’re used to. Every element should have an antimatter equivalent, and they should have all the same properties as their regular matter counterparts except for charge. These antiparticles can also link up to form antiatoms, so for example an antiproton and an antielectron can form an antihydrogen atom. Some particles, such as photons, are actually their own antiparticles. But don’t worry, it won’t get far before it collides with an electron and vanishes again.Īrtificially, antimatter is mostly produced in particle accelerators like CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, but again only in minuscule amounts, and it usually doesn’t last long.Įvery particle has its equivalent antiparticle – for example, there’s the antiproton, the antineutron, and the antielectron (better known as the positron). It’s produced naturally in tiny amounts in cosmic ray interactions, during hurricanes and thunderstorms, and as part of some types of radioactive decay – in fact, anything with potassium-40 in it will spit out the occasional antimatter particle. Lucky for us, antimatter is extremely rare. But that simple difference has some major implications – if ever a particle and its antiparticle should meet, they will annihilate each other in a burst of energy.
So what actually is antimatter? Where is it? Why is it important that we understand it? And why hasn’t it already destroyed the universe?Īs strange as it sounds, antimatter is essentially just like regular matter, except its particles have the opposite charge. But this antimatter is very real, and despite decades of study it remains very mysterious. It sounds like sci-fi: normal matter has an “evil twin” that annihilates as soon as the two come into contact.
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