To study antihydrogen, however, you first need to make and store lots of atoms. The solution is a ‘magnetic bottle’ that uses electric and magnetic fields to imprison the antimatter. Then you need to keep it away from the sides of your container as these are made of matter too. But how do you keep a substance that destroys anything it touches?įirst, you need a very good vacuum so that the antimatter doesn’t inadvertently bump into a stray atom in the air. This has no net electric charge, but it will respond to magnetic fields. If a positron happens to be caught by the electric forces of an antiproton, you have an atom of antihydrogen. Solving this mystery requires antimatter atoms to study. It reinforced the idea that matter and antimatter emerged in perfect balance. The resulting flash of energy, in an area smaller than the size of a single nucleus, was akin to the conditions in the Universe just moments after its birth.īy recording the results of these ‘mini-Bangs’, the experiments confirmed that energy can change into counterbalanced particles and antiparticles. Accelerated to nearly the speed of light, they were collided head-on. But why is there matter in the Universe, rather than nothing at all, when the laws of physics imply that the energy of the Big Bang should have congealed equally into matter and antimatter? They should have annihilated each other.īut was the theory correct? Well, it was put to the test in the 1990s by annihilating electrons and positrons in a particle accelerator.
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