Scientists in Geneva on Tuesday took some antiprotons out for a spin — a very delicate one — in a truck, in a never-tried-before test drive that has been deemed a success.
If the so-called antimatter had come into contact with actual matter, even for a fraction of an instant, it would have been annihilated in a quick flash of energy. So experts at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) had to be extra careful when they took 92 antiprotons on the road for a short ride.
The antiprotons were suspended in a vacuum inside a specially designed box and held in place by supercooled magnets.
Photo: EPA
In methodical exercise over about three hours, the nearly 1,000kg cryogenic box was craned up slowly and moved through a cavernous lab the onto the truck.
The drive on CERN’s campus itself lasted only about 30 minutes to test how, if at all, the infinitesimal particles could be transported by road without seeping out.
The antiprotons were then placed back in their usual lab area, and the operation was concluded with applause, claims of success and a bottle of Champagne.
“Transporting antimatter is a pioneering and ambitious project,” CERN director for research and computing Gautier Hamel de Monchenault said. “We are at the beginning of an exciting scientific journey that will allow us to further deepen our understanding of antimatter.”
Manipulating antimatter, like antiprotons, can be tricky business. As scientists understand the universe today, for every type of particle that exists, there is a corresponding antiparticle, exactly matching the particle but with an opposite charge.
If the opposites come into contact, they “annihilate” each other, setting off lots of energy, depending on the masses involved. Any bumps in the road on the test journey that aren’t compensated for by the specially-designed box could spoil the whole exercise.
“The motivation behind these experiments is to compare matter and antimatter with extremely high accuracy and watch for differences which we might have not seen yet,” CERN physicist Stefan Ulmer said.
The exercise was a first step toward making good on hopes, one day, to deliver CERN antiprotons to researchers abroad — such as at Heinrich Heine University in Dusseldorf, Germany, which is about eight hours away in normal driving conditions.
“We are scientists. We want to understand something about the fundamental symmetries of nature, and we know that if we do these experiments outside of this accelerator facility, we can measure 100 to 1,000 times better,” Ulmer said.
The antiprotons were encased in a “transportable antiproton trap” box that is compact enough to fit through ordinary laboratory doors and fit on a truck. It used superconducting magnets cooled to minus-269°C that allowed the antiprotons to be remain suspended in a vacuum — not touching the inner walls, which are made of matter.
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