Scientists from the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva just announced that have trapped and stored anti-matter for 16 minutes. The previous record was 2 seconds. The Telegraph of London, reports this 5,000 fold improvement over the previous record, will enable potentially break-through research into what happened after the universe was created with the Big Bang, 13.6 billion years ago.
Scientists have trapped and stored antihydrogen atoms for a record 16 minutes, a stunning technical feat that promises deeper insights into the mysteries of anti-matter.
Particles and anti-particles annihilate each other in a small flash of energy when they collide. At the moment of the big bang, nearly 14 billion years ago, matter and anti-matter are thought to have existed in equal quantities. If that balance had persisted, the observable Universe we inhabit would never have come into being. For unknown reasons -- and fortunately for us -- Nature seemed to have a slight preference for matter, and today anti-matter is rare. This asymmetry remains one of the greatest riddles in particle physics. ...
"We can keep the antihydrogen atoms trapped for 1,000 seconds. This is long enough to begin to study them," said Jeffrey Hangst, spokesman for the scientists.
Scientists will now look for "violations" or discrepancies in something called the charge-parity-time reversal (CPT) symmetry.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...
Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times writes a more detailed piece. in which he tells us that Jeffrey Hangst of Aarhus University in Denmark, reports:
The key to the new work is a trap using an eight-magnetic-pole series of magnets to confine the antiatoms, preventing them from annihilating themselves on the walls of the container. Because antihydrogen, like hydrogen, is electrically neutral, such containment is difficult. But because each antiatom acts like a very weak magnet, the feat can be achieved if the antiatoms are moving slowly enough — that is, if they have an energy corresponding to a temperature less than half a degree above absolute zero.
The researchers achieve that by passing antiprotons produced in the accelerator through an electron cloud and filters that slow it down before it enters the trap. In the trap, the antiproton is combined with a positron produced by radioactive disintegration to produce slowly moving antihydrogen atoms, which can be trapped.
But to study the antiatoms' interaction with gravity, Hangst said, they need to be cooled to a temperature less than a thousandth of a degree above absolute zero. That can be achieved with lasers, but the current magnetic containment chamber does not allow laser access. Researchers are building a new one that does, which should be available next year.
I have to admit these articles have left me with more questions than answers. And, this is a special moment for me in that this is the first poll I've ever done anywhere, where I haven't the sligthtest clue as to what is the answer to a single response in my attached poll.
If any of you either know, or can think of an even plausible response to any of these questions, I would be delighted to know in the comments.
Still, this is an amazing accomplishment I'm pleased to hear about. But, tell me this. If a small team of a dozen scientists in CERN can figure this out, how come almost 600 of our top politicians in Washington can not figure out how to balance the budget without slashing social programs for the elderly, poor, and needy, in the richest country in the world?