• Question: How do you store anti-matter?

    Asked by 263prtb49 to Jackie, Michele, Oliver, Vicky, Yelong on 20 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Michele Faucci Giannelli

      Michele Faucci Giannelli answered on 17 Mar 2015:

      That is a very challenging goal which has stretched the engineering ability of the people at CERN where there is the largest storage of anti matter, few atoms of anti-hydrogen. If I remember correctly they used strong magnetic fields to trap the anti-atoms in a vacuum chamber. They were able to do it because of the magnetic dipole of the hydrogen atoms which allowed the scientist to store the anti-atoms for enough time to perform the experiment. The goal of this experiment was to measure the properties of anti atoms and test if anything would be different from matter so to explain the big different we observe in the Universe. All test confirmed that anti-matter behave as normal matter.

    • Photo: Jaclyn Bell

      Jaclyn Bell answered on 20 Mar 2015:

      Its not my area of research, but I think antimatter is held in place by a strong electromagnetic field – in something called a Penning Trap. When the antimatter is trapped it is important that it doesn’t touch the walls of the trap or the antimatter will react with matter – this is an important feature of the trap! Laser cooling is also used (I think) to catch antimatter, by slowing down or removing charge from the ions. Vicky is our magnet expert so maybe she knows more about this than me 🙂

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