CERN transports antimatter for 1st time in historic truck experiment

ISTANBUL

Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) transported 92 antiprotons by truck around the laboratory’s site near Geneva, Switzerland, on March 24, marking the first-ever movement of antimatter outside a fixed experimental facility.

Antimatter, the opposite of ordinary matter, annihilates into energy when it comes into contact with matter, making it extremely difficult to store and transport. To overcome this challenge, researchers used a specially designed container that traps particles using magnetic fields.

The container traveled more than 8 kilometers (5 miles) at speeds reaching 42 kilometers per hour (26 mph) as many CERN staff gathered to film the historic moment.

The experiment aims to eventually transport antiparticles to a location free from experimental noise, allowing scientists to study antiprotons with greater precision than currently possible at CERN’s antimatter factory, where they are produced.

CERN is currently the only facility in the world capable of producing antiprotons in usable quantities.

“It is something humanity has never done before, it is historic,” says Stefan Ulmer, a physicist at Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf in Germany and a member of the team.

Antimatter research could help scientists better understand the structure of radioactive nuclei and address fundamental questions about the universe. Researchers have long envisioned the possibility of transporting antimatter since the antimatter factory was established more than three decades ago.

“This is a great technological achievement,” says Tara Shears, a physicist at the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom. Antimatter is the most fragile type of matter there is, and so storing it, let alone driving it around CERN, is “a technological marvel”, she says.