Canadian scientists 'bottle' antimatter
Testing now possible to help solve mystery of what happened to 'lost half' of universe
Makoto Fujiwara has spent more than a decade in laboratories hunting an elusive prey, the stuff of science fiction – the missing half of everything.
He and other Canadian researchers have finally managed to trap their lightning in a bottle. Only it isn’t lightning they’ve got in the bottle – it’s antimatter.
From left: Makoto Fujiwara, Andrea Gutierrez, Walter Hardy, Tim Friesen, Michael Hayden and Mohammad Ashkezari. The team has succeeded in storing antimatter atoms for more than 16 minutes - a virtual eternity for a rare substance that scientists have struggled to keep intact for more than a few fractions of a second.
In a paper appearing online Sunday in the journal Nature Physics, lead author Fujiwara and his colleagues say they’ve succeeded in storing antimatter atoms for more than 16 minutes – virtually an eternity for a rare substance that scientists have struggled to keep intact for more than a few fractions of a second.
“It’s a kind of game-changer,” said Fujiwara, a researcher at the Vancouver-based TRIUMF, a laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, and an adjunct professor at the University of Calgary.
Finally trapping antimatter for a prolonged period of time opens the door for researchers to do the kind of testing they hope could one day solve what’s been described as one of the biggest mysteries of science.
The dominant theory for the creation of the universe holds that, when the cosmos got started at the Big Bang, matter and antimatter should have been produced in equal amounts.
Full Story
Testing now possible to help solve mystery of what happened to 'lost half' of universe
Makoto Fujiwara has spent more than a decade in laboratories hunting an elusive prey, the stuff of science fiction – the missing half of everything.
He and other Canadian researchers have finally managed to trap their lightning in a bottle. Only it isn’t lightning they’ve got in the bottle – it’s antimatter.
From left: Makoto Fujiwara, Andrea Gutierrez, Walter Hardy, Tim Friesen, Michael Hayden and Mohammad Ashkezari. The team has succeeded in storing antimatter atoms for more than 16 minutes - a virtual eternity for a rare substance that scientists have struggled to keep intact for more than a few fractions of a second.
In a paper appearing online Sunday in the journal Nature Physics, lead author Fujiwara and his colleagues say they’ve succeeded in storing antimatter atoms for more than 16 minutes – virtually an eternity for a rare substance that scientists have struggled to keep intact for more than a few fractions of a second.
“It’s a kind of game-changer,” said Fujiwara, a researcher at the Vancouver-based TRIUMF, a laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, and an adjunct professor at the University of Calgary.
Finally trapping antimatter for a prolonged period of time opens the door for researchers to do the kind of testing they hope could one day solve what’s been described as one of the biggest mysteries of science.
The dominant theory for the creation of the universe holds that, when the cosmos got started at the Big Bang, matter and antimatter should have been produced in equal amounts.
Full Story
