For thirty minutes on Tuesday, a team of researchers white-knuckled it across the CERN campus on the outskirts of Geneva, completing the world’s first haul of antimatter particles ever attempted.
Antimatter is incredibly unstable, making it notoriously difficult to store in a solid structure, let along the back of a cabover rig. Yet that’s exactly what they did, after physicists decided it was necessary to move antiprotons away from their CERN production line to another on-campus lab where they’d be free from “experimental noise,” Nature reported.
In order to complete the haul, physicists sealed 92 antiprotons in a specially designed vacuum bottle, which was cooled to an astonishing 4 degrees Kelvin, or -452.47 degrees Fahrenheit. Each antiproton is precious, since CERN’s “antimatter factory” — the only place on Earth where antiprotons can currently be produced — are only able to capture a limited amount.
Successfully transporting the stuff, at speeds reaching up to 26 miles per hour, is therefore a major win for researchers, who dreamed of hauling stable antimatter since the antimatter factory first opened more than thirty years ago. “Now it’s finally possible,” Christian Smorra, the physicist who led the project, told Nature.
Stefan Ulmer, a physicist and colleague of Smorra’s, said it was “something humanity has never done before, it is historic.”
“We bought a lot of champagne, and we invited the entire antimatter community to celebrate with us today,” he told Nature.
And in case you’re wondering, the consequences of a potential failure — while probably devastating to researchers — carries no risk to human life.
“If the trap fails during transport and the antiparticles annihilate, the energy released will be about a millionth of a Joule,” a note on CERN’s antimatter hub reads. “A single key press on a keyboard is about 10,000 times more than that. So antimatter transportation is no more dangerous than any other form of goods transportation.”
Going forward, it’s hoped that the process will enable researchers in other labs to get their hands on the precious cargo, allowing antimatter research to flourish outside the walls of CERN’s labs.
Tara Shears, a physicist at the University of Liverpool, told Nature that’s a future she welcomes.
“I love the idea of CERN becoming the Deliveroo of antimatter,” she said.
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