printer
Well-Known Member
New system blasts antihydrogen atoms, chilling and slowing them dramatically, scientists say
Antimatter atoms get annihilated whenever they contact matter — which makes up everything. That makes them hard to study, which has been a problem, scientists say, because studying antimatter is key to understanding how the universe formed.
So the question has been, how can you manipulate antimatter atoms in order to study and measure them properly?
A team of scientists say they have figured out a way to do that by slowing down antimatter atoms with blasts from a special Canadian-built laser. And they say that could make it possible to create antimatter molecules — larger particles more similar to the matter we encounter in the real world — in the lab.
"This is where it really gets exciting for us," said Makoto Fujiwara, a research scientist at TRIUMF, Canada's particle accelerator centre in Vancouver, B.C. "You can really start doing things that are basically unimaginable previously,"
Won't paste the whole article, worth looking at.
Antimatter atoms get annihilated whenever they contact matter — which makes up everything. That makes them hard to study, which has been a problem, scientists say, because studying antimatter is key to understanding how the universe formed.
So the question has been, how can you manipulate antimatter atoms in order to study and measure them properly?
A team of scientists say they have figured out a way to do that by slowing down antimatter atoms with blasts from a special Canadian-built laser. And they say that could make it possible to create antimatter molecules — larger particles more similar to the matter we encounter in the real world — in the lab.
"This is where it really gets exciting for us," said Makoto Fujiwara, a research scientist at TRIUMF, Canada's particle accelerator centre in Vancouver, B.C. "You can really start doing things that are basically unimaginable previously,"
Won't paste the whole article, worth looking at.
