Maybe antimatter is finally ready for its close-up. A team of physicists has succeeded in producing rudimentary atoms of antimatter and holding on to them for several minutes, an advance that holds hope for detailed comparisons of how ordinary atoms of matter compare with their exotic antimatter counterparts.
The researchers, from the ALPHA antimatter experiment at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics, reported last year the first trapping of antihydrogen, the simplest antimatter atom. But the antihydrogen had at that time been confined for less than two tenths of a second. That interval has now been extended by a factor of more than 5,000. In a study published online 5 June in Nature Physics, the ALPHA group reports having confined antihydrogen for 16 minutes and 40 seconds. The more relevant number for physicists, who often deal in powers of 10, is 1,000 seconds — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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