Monday, June 6, 2011

Antimatter 'trapped' for 15 minutes by scientists

The Associated Press/Huffington Post:

Geneva - Nuclear scientists announced Sunday they have found a way to "trap" for more than 15 minutes elusive antimatter atoms that used to disappear after a fraction of a second.

That will give scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research time to study the atoms properly, in the hope of understanding what happened during the first moments of the universe.

The achievement is a significant improvement on earlier attempts to trap antihydrogen, which like all antimatter has a tendency to disappear before scientists have time to examine it.

Understanding antihydrogen will help solve one of the biggest riddles of physics. Theorists say both matter and antimatter must have been created in equal amounts in the Big Bang, but antimatter has since disappeared from the natural universe while matter abounds in the stars, planets and galaxies.


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