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Antimatter CERN kept in record time: Over 16 minutes

Atoms of antimatter, the antihidrogen were captured for over 16 minutes in an experiment conducted at the Centre Européen de Recherches Nucléaires (CERN) in Geneva, which will facilitate the study by specialists of antimatter, says a study published Sunday.

"Can we antihidrogen trapped atoms for 1000 seconds," time "long enough to start studying it," said Jeffrey Hangst from Aarhus University in Denmark, on behalf of participants in the experiment conducted at CERN ALPHA .

A commodity "mirror" of the one we know, antimatter is still difficult to see because all the atoms of antimatter annihilate upon contact with matter, producing a huge amount of energy.

A hydrogen atom consists of a proton with a positive electric charge and a negative electron. Antihidrogen atom consists of a negative proton (antiproton) and a positive electron (positron).

According to current theories, matter and antimatter were created in equal amounts during the first moments after the Big Bang, the universe, but there were particles of matter.

The great mystery is where it went the other half of the universe - antimatter? This question of concern to physicians who wish to explore the properties of antimatter, which was created in particle accelerators.

Antihidrogen atoms were first produced at CERN in 1995. But they were annihilated almost instantly on contact with matter.

Researchers from the ALPHA program at CERN has recently made another step forward in this direction, putting up a new type of magnetic wall receptacle, in which 38 remained suspended antihidrogen atoms away from the walls of the container, in the free state, time of 0.17 seconds.

The duration of their isolation could be carried further to 1,000 seconds, according to a study published Sunday online in the journal Nature Physics website.

According to the release issued by CERN, 309 antihidrogen atoms could be trapped for a long enough time to "begin to study its properties in detail."

It is subject to antigravitaţii antimatter? It is one of the questions and put them physicists. The discovery of such a "repulsive gravity" could bring an answer to another mystery - the unknown power that favors accelerating expansion of the universe. Gravity tends, instead, to push galaxies to approach each other.

When you suffer some changes, this field mirror follows the same "symmetry" of the laws of physics as normal matter? The CPT symmetry (charge-parity-time), "while a particle moves in our universe would be indistinguishable from an antiparticle that time reversal in a mirror universe," said researchers at CERN.

"Any evidence that shows a violation of CPT symmetry principles will force us to seriously rethink the way we understand nature," said Jeffrey Hangst, whose team is preparing to consider antiatomii to compare them with those of the atomic properties of matter .