Antimatter

Quantum physics once shocked scientists by revealing that particles can behave like waves—and now, that strange behavior has been pushed even further. For the first time, researchers have observed wave-like interference in positronium, an exotic “atom” made of an electron and its antimatter partner, a positron. This breakthrough not only strengthens the weird reality of quantum mechanics but also opens the door to new experiments involving antimatter, including the possibility of testing how gravity affects it—something never directly measured before.

A new type of radiofrequency trap can capture particles with extremely different requirements and could theoretically hold both types of particles at the same time. Researchers in the group of Professor Dmitry Budker from the PRISMA++ Cluster of Excellence and the Helmholtz Institute at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) were able to trap calcium ions or electrons in the same apparatus.

Shock waves from tiny black holes in the early universe could explain how antimatter became so rare while matter is common.

CERN scientists transported antimatter by truck for the first time, enabling ultraprecise studies that could reveal why matter dominates the universe.

Truck was used last month to transport 92 antiprotons around CERN The post Shock as CERN antiproton lorry vanishes in staff car park appeared first on Physics World.

CERN scientists on Tuesday pulled off the unprecedented feat of transporting antiprotons by road, successfully test-driving the world's first antimatter delivery system, with an eye to one day supplying research labs across Europe.

Have you been keeping up to date with physics news? Try our short quiz to find out The post Quiz of the week: how many antiprotons did CERN transport by truck? appeared first on Physics World.

Scientists at CERN built a container weighing more than a ton to transport just 92 subatomic antimatter particles without annihilating them

A cloud of 92 antiprotons have been on a journey around CERN’s campus The post Researchers at CERN transport antiprotons by truck in world‑first experiment appeared first on Physics World.

Scientists are envisioning an antimatter delivery program that could ferry antiprotons from CERN to other labs around Europe.

CERN is working on building an antimatter delivery service. The project passed a big test by successfully transporting 92 antiprotons around a 4-kilometre loop of road

Scientists in Geneva 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.

Scientists in Geneva are taking some antiprotons out for a spin—a very delicate one—in a truck, in a never-tried-before test drive.

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Did primordial black holes born during the Big Bang swallow the universe's antimatter, allowing matter to dominate the cosmos?

On Tuesday, CERN will transport antiprotons on a truck for the first time, testing the plan to deliver antimatter by road to research labs across Europe

MACE is a next-generation experiment designed to catch muonium transforming into its antimatter twin, a process that would rewrite the rules of particle physics. The last search for this effect ended more than two decades ago, and MACE plans to leap far beyond it using cutting-edge beams, targets, and detectors. A discovery would point to entirely new forces or particles operating at extreme energy scales.

We need to talk about antimatter.

Simulations challenge conventional ideas about positronic interactions

Chemical rockets have taken us to the moon and back, but traveling to the stars demands something more powerful. Space X's Starship can lift extraordinary masses to orbit and send payloads throughout the solar system using its chemical rockets, but it cannot fly to nearby stars at 30% of light speed and land. For missions beyond our local region of space, we need something fundamentally more energetic than chemical combustion, and physics offers, or, in other words, antimatter.

Chemical rockets have taken us to the Moon and back, but traveling to the stars demands something more powerful. Space X’s Starship can lift extraordinary masses to orbit and send payloads throughout the Solar System using its chemical rockets but it cannot fly to nearby stars at thirty percent of light speed and land. For missions beyond our local region of space, we need something fundamentally more energetic than chemical combustion, and physics offers or in other words, antimatter.

Nature is the foremost international weekly scientific journal in the world and is the flagship journal for Nature Portfolio. It publishes the finest peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness, accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions. Nature publishes landmark papers, award winning news, leading comment and expert opinion on important, topical scientific news and events that enable readers to share the latest discoveries in science and evolve the discussion amongst the global scientific community.

Nature is the foremost international weekly scientific journal in the world and is the flagship journal for Nature Portfolio. It publishes the finest peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness, accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions. Nature publishes landmark papers, award winning news, leading comment and expert opinion on important, topical scientific news and events that enable readers to share the latest discoveries in science and evolve the discussion amongst the global scientific community.

Having more antimatter could help solve profound mysteries of physics The post Sympathetic cooling gives antihydrogen experiment a boost appeared first on Physics World.

Physicists from Swansea University have played the leading role in a scientific breakthrough at CERN, developing an innovative technique that increases the antihydrogen trapping rate by a factor of ten.

Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb proposes that interstellar object 3I/ATLAS could be made of antimatter—"the most efficient fuel"—while NASA scientists remain sceptical.

Howdy, pards! This autumnal week brought a new challenge to last decade's claim of a strong Yellowstone trophic cascade after the reintroduction of wolves. Evolutionary biologists propose that carrion-eating was a dependable nutritional strategy for early humans that may have influenced evolution. And Chinese researchers report that LLMs and humans represent sentences similarly.

Interaction could lead to experiments that challenge the Standard Model The post Elusive scattering of antineutrinos from nuclei spotted using small detector appeared first on Physics World.

A new finding at CERN on the French-Swiss border brings us closer to answering why matter dominates over its opposite, antimatter.

Neutrinos are extremely elusive elementary particles. Day and night, 60 billion of them stream from the sun through every square centimeter of Earth every second, which is transparent to them. After the first theoretical prediction of their existence, decades passed before they were actually detected. These experiments are usually extremely large to account for the very weak interaction of neutrinos with matter.

Experiment could help reveal why there is so little antimatter in the universe The post Quantum control of individual antiprotons puts the Standard Model to the test appeared first on Physics World.

The first antimatter qubit will help search for differences between matter and antimatter

Scientists made an antimatter qubit made from an antiproton that is in a state of quantum superposition. This breakthrough will allow the strength of the particle's magnetic moment to be measured with unprecedented precision.

In a breakthrough for antimatter research, the BASE collaboration at CERN has kept an antiproton—the antimatter counterpart of a proton—oscillating smoothly between two different quantum states for almost a minute while trapped. The achievement, reported in a paper published today in the journal Nature, marks the first demonstration of an antimatter quantum bit, or qubit, and paves the way for substantially improved comparisons between the behavior of matter and antimatter.

Observations at Cern bring us closer to answering a fundamental question about the universe. The post New Discovery Could Hint at Why Our Universe Is Made Up of Matter and Not Antimatter appeared first on SingularityHub.

The LHCb experiment has observed a new difference between matter and antimatter in particles called baryons

The first-known observations of matter–antimatter asymmetry in a decaying composite subatomic particle that belongs to the baryon class are reported from the LHCb experiment located at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. This effect, known as charge–parity (CP) violation, has been theoretically predicted, but hitherto escaped observation in baryons. The experimental verification of this asymmetry violation in baryons, published in Nature this week, is important as baryons make up most of the matter in the observable universe.

Physicists working at the CERN particle physics lab said they detected a slight but significant difference in how particles of matter and antimatter decay.

Physicists are always searching for new theories to improve our understanding of the universe and resolve big unanswered questions. But there’s a problem. How do you search for undiscovered forces or particles when you don’t know what they look like? Take dark matter. We see signs of this mysterious cosmic phenomenon throughout the universe, but […]

Physicists are always searching for new theories to improve our understanding of the universe and resolve big unanswered questions.

Camera components will improve precision of moiré deflectometer The post Smartphone sensors and antihydrogen could soon put relativity to the test appeared first on Physics World.

Nature is the foremost international weekly scientific journal in the world and is the flagship journal for Nature Portfolio. It publishes the finest peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness, accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions. Nature publishes landmark papers, award winning news, leading comment and expert opinion on important, topical scientific news and events that enable readers to share the latest discoveries in science and evolve the discussion amongst the global scientific community.

Nature is the foremost international weekly scientific journal in the world and is the flagship journal for Nature Portfolio. It publishes the finest peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness, accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions. Nature publishes landmark papers, award winning news, leading comment and expert opinion on important, topical scientific news and events that enable readers to share the latest discoveries in science and evolve the discussion amongst the global scientific community.

Neutrinos and antineutrinos are elementary particles with small but unknown mass. High-precision atomic mass measurements have revealed that beta decay of the silver-110 isomer has a strong potential to be used for the determination of electron antineutrino mass. The result is an important step paving the way for future antineutrino experiments.

Neutrinos and antineutrinos are elementary particles with small but unknown mass. High-precision atomic mass measurements at the Accelerator Laboratory of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, have revealed that beta decay of the silver-110 isomer has a strong potential to be used for the determination of electron antineutrino mass. The result is an important step in paving the way for future antineutrino experiments.

Author(s): Ryan WilkinsonExperiments at the Large Hadron Collider have revealed a previously unseen nucleus known as antihyperhelium-4. [Physics 18, s51] Published Wed Apr 23, 2025

Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider found evidence of an unprecedentedly heavy and exotic form of antimatter in the aftermath of a collision between extremely fast lead ions

Did you know that the camera sensor in your smartphone could help unlock the secrets of antimatter? The AEgIS collaboration, led by Professor Christoph Hugenschmidt's team from the research neutron source FRM II at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), has developed a detector using modified mobile camera sensors to image, in real time, the points where antimatter annihilates with matter.

Charge-parity violation is thought to explain why there’s more matter than antimatter in the universe. Scientists just spotted it in a new place.

On March 24, at the annual Rencontres de Moriond conference taking place in La Thuile, Italy, the LHCb collaboration at CERN reported a new milestone in our understanding of the subtle yet profound differences between matter and antimatter.

Analysing the aftermath of particle collisions has revealed two new instances of “CP violation”, a process that explains why our universe contains more matter than antimatter

Science in meter and verse

Antimatter is a fascinating kind of matter made up of antiparticles, which have a mass equivalent to that of their normal matter counterparts, yet they exhibit an opposite charge and distinct quantum properties.

Author(s): N. Eugene Engelbrecht and R. Du Toit StraussThe spectrum of cosmic-ray antiprotons has been measured for a full solar cycle, which may allow a better understanding of the sources and transport mechanisms of these high-energy particles. [Physics 18, 19] Published Mon Feb 03, 2025

Observation backs up the statistical hadronization model The post Antimatter partner of hyperhelium-4 is spotted at CERN appeared first on Physics World.

Nuclear fission is the most reliable source of antineutrinos, but they are difficult to characterize. A recent study suggests how their emission can be simulated most effectively.

Scientists at CERN's ALICE detector are replicating conditions found during the Big Bang, attempting to get to the bottom of how matter came to dominate over antimatter.

How do you find and measure nuclear particles, like antineutrinos, that travel near the speed of light?

In the Big Bang, matter and antimatter should have been created in equal amounts. But fast forward 13.8 billion years to the present day, and the universe is made almost entirely of matter, so something must have happened to create this imbalance.

Getting places in space quickly has been the goal of propulsion research for a long time. Rockets, our most common means of doing so, are great for providing lots of force but are extraordinarily inefficient. Other options like electric propulsion and solar sailing are efficient but offer measly amounts of force, albeit for a long time.

Getting places in space quickly has been the goal of propulsion research for a long time. Rockets, our most common means of doing so, are great for providing lots of force but extraordinarily inefficient. Other options like electric propulsion and solar sailing are efficient but offer measly amounts of force, albeit for a long time. … Continue reading "Antimatter Propulsion Is Still Far Away, But It Could Change Everything" The post Antimatter Propulsion Is Still Far Away, But It Could Change Everything appeared first on Universe Today.

Using the Large Hadron Collider and the ALICE detector scientists have found the heavist antimatter particle yet, generated in Big Bang like conditions.

Collisions between heavy ions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) create quark–gluon plasma, a hot and dense state of matter that is thought to have filled the universe around one millionth of a second after the Big Bang. Heavy-ion collisions also create suitable conditions for the production of atomic nuclei and exotic hypernuclei, as well as their antimatter counterparts, antinuclei and antihypernuclei.

New images show the rapidly rotating pulsar of the "Guitar Nebula" shooting out a gigantic cosmic plume of plasma, X-rays and supercharged particles spinning along a magnetic field line in interstellar space.

Scientists have recently identified electrons and positrons with the highest energies ever recorded on Earth. They provide evidence of cosmic processes emitting colossal amounts of energy, the origins of which are as yet unknown.

A special particle trap designed to fit in a truck let researchers haul 70 protons across the CERN campus. Antiprotons may be next.

Antimatter might sound like something out of science fiction, but at the CERN Antiproton Decelerator (AD), scientists produce and trap antiprotons every day. The BASE experiment can even contain them for more than a year—an impressive feat considering that antimatter and matter annihilate upon contact.

Detection of antideuterons and antihelium could help hone dark-matter models The post Cosmic antimatter could be created by annihilating WIMPs appeared first on Physics World.

There's too much antimatter in cosmic rays, showers of charged particles that pelt Earth. Could this be explained by annihilating dark matter? If so, does it point to the existence of WIMPs?

A detector aboard the International Space Station found signatures of unexpectedly abundant antimatter – which may have been created in clashes of dark matter particles

Traces of antimatter in cosmic rays reopen the search for 'WIMPs' as dark matter.

One of the great challenges of modern cosmology is to reveal the nature of dark matter. We know it exists (it constitutes more than 85% of the matter in the universe), but we have never seen it directly and still do not know what it is.

Discerning whether a nuclear reactor is being used to also create material for nuclear weapons is difficult, but capturing and analyzing antimatter particles has shown promise for monitoring what specific nuclear reactor operations are occurring, even from hundreds of miles away. Researchers have developed a detector that exploits Cherenkov radiation, sensing antineutrinos and characterizing their energy profiles from miles away as a way of monitoring activity at nuclear reactors. They proposed to assemble their device in northeast England and detect antineutrinos from reactors from all over the U.K. as well as in northern France.

Nuclear fission reactors act as a key power source for many parts of the world and worldwide power capacity is expected to nearly double by 2050. One issue, however, is the difficulty of discerning whether a nuclear reactor is being used to also create material for nuclear weapons.

Author(s): Paweł MoskalThe quantum entanglement of photons used in positron emission tomography (PET) scans has been shown to be surprisingly robust, opening prospects for developing quantum-enhanced PET schemes. [Physics 17, 138] Published Wed Sep 25, 2024

Most atoms are made from positively charged protons, neutral neutrons and negatively charged electrons. Positronium is an exotic atom composed of a single negative electron and a positively charged antimatter positron. It is naturally very short-lived, but researchers including those from the University of Tokyo successfully cooled and slowed down samples of positronium using carefully tuned lasers.

Maxwell's demon cooling trap measures the magnetic moment of antiprotons with higher precision than ever before The post Improved antiproton trap could shed more light on antimatter-matter asymmetry appeared first on Physics World.

The newly found antiparticle, called antihyperhydrogen-4, could have a potential imbalance with its matter counterpart that may help scientists understand how our universe came to be.

Antihyperhydrogen-4 is observed by the Star Collaboration The post Heavy exotic antinucleus gives up no secrets about antimatter asymmetry appeared first on Physics World.

In experiments at the Brookhaven National Lab in the US, an international team of physicists has detected the heaviest "anti-nuclei" ever seen. The tiny, short-lived objects are composed of exotic antimatter particles.

Scientists studying the tracks of particles streaming from six billion collisions of atomic nuclei at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) -- an 'atom smasher' that recreates the conditions of the early universe -- have discovered a new kind of antimatter nucleus, the heaviest ever detected. Composed of four antimatter particles -- an antiproton, two antineutrons, and one antihyperon -- these exotic antinuclei are known as antihyperhydrogen-4.