IN A global first, scientists at CERN, which operates the world’s largest particle physics lab, were able to successfully transport antimatter across their laboratory’s main site in Geneva. Antimatter is the counterpart of matter, composed of antiparticles that have the same mass but carry opposite charge. Upon contact with matter, antimatter ‘annihilates’ and energy is released as per the equation E=mc^2 (E equals mc squared). Antimatter is therefore difficult to preserve. The researchers from the ‘BASE’ collaboration at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), Switzerland, accumulated 92 antiprotons -- the antimatter counterpart of protons -- in a portable cryogenic Penning trap that they developed.

 

The trap was then disconnected from the experimental facility, loaded onto a truck and continued with being experimented upon after the move. The trip across the organisation’s premises paves way for transporting antiprotons to other Europeans laboratories where properties of the antiparticle could be studied. “Today, in a world first, a team of scientists from the BASE experiment at CERN successfully transported a trap filled with antiprotons in a truck across the Laboratory’s main site,” the researchers said in a statement. “This world premiere is a test, the ultimate aim being to transport antiprotons to other European laboratories, such as (Germany’s) Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf (HHU), where very-high-precision measurements of the antiproton properties could be performed,” the statement reads.