New Experiment Aims to Trap Anit-matter
by Clara Moskowitz
A new project is underway at the European physics lab CERN to produce antimatter versions of protons and trap them for study.
Antimatter is the spooky cousin of normal matter. For every regular subatomic particle, there is thought to be a corresponding antiparticle with equal mass and opposite charge. When a particle and its antimatter partner meet, they annihilate each other to become pure energy.
The Geneva, Switzerland-based CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) is home to other famous physics experiments, notably the world’s largest particle accelerator — the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC — and the OPERA experiment that recently announced the detection of particles that appear to be traveling faster than light…
(read more: Live Science)
(image: STAR Collaboration and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
