Scientists briefly capture a form of matter's elusive antagonist--antimatter About 38 atoms of antihydrogen are stored for about two-tenths of a second by researchers at CERN. With some fine-tuning, scientists should be able to make enough antimatter to examine why it doesn't seem to exist in nature.
The story is far-fetched, to be sure, but scientists at CERN have now figured out how to trap one type of antimatter — elusive antihydrogen atoms — according to research published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.
In Dan Brown's novel "Angels and Demons," villains try to use antimatter generated at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) to blow up the Vatican.
The amount of antihydrogen the researchers stored— 38 atoms, each held for just about two-tenths of a second — isn't enough to power a 100-watt lightbulb for even half a nanosecond, much less blow up a building. But once the new procedure is fine-tuned, scientists should be able to create enough of the stuff to conduct a long-awaited test of one of the fundamental theories of particle physics, said Jeffrey Hangst, a physics professor at Denmark's Aarhus University and the lead author of the study.
Theorists think the Big Bang produced equal parts of matter and its opposite, antimatter. When the two came in contact they should have canceled each other out, leaving behind only a burst of energy.
The universe, however, is full of matter, whereas antimatter doesn't seem to exist in nature, a fact that has had physicists scratching their heads for decades and wondering if their theories are correct. If scientists, through studying the antimatter they now know how to make, were to find that antimatter is somehow fundamentally different from matter, it might help explain why this imbalance exists.
Hangst said his team would like to shine a laser at the stored antihydrogen atoms to see if they behave the same way hydrogen atoms do.
The Standard Model of particle physics predicts that hydrogen and antihydrogen atoms should be identical, he said. "If they're not, everything needs to be reexamined, and textbooks need to be rewritten," he added.
Scientists at CERN, including some affiliated with a rival research team, have been generating antihydrogen atoms in vacuum chambers since 2002. But until now, trapping those atoms has been impossible. As soon as the antihydrogen atoms touch matter — including the walls of the device in which they're made — they disappear.
Różnice między wodorem a anty-wodorem
Naukowcy z projektu ALPHA Europejskiej Organizacji Badań Jądrowych stworzyli, i utrzymali pod kontrolą pułapki magnetycznej, atomy antymaterii. Trzydzieści osiem atomów antywodoru otrzymano dzięki schłodzeniu anty-protonów do 0,5 K, tj. pół stopnia ponad zerem bezwzględnym. Na chwilę obecną są w stanie utrzymać je przez 172 milisekundy, co już wystarcza by stwierdzić, że w istocie tam są.

Kolejnym etapem będzie stworzenie wystarczającej liczby atomów i wydłużenie czasu na jaki mogą zostać uwięzione. Pozwoli to wykonać eksperymenty potwierdzające, że zachowują się jak atomy wodoru.

Sztucznie antymaterię uzyskano po raz pierwszy w 1995 roku, w ilości 8 atomów anty-wodoru.