Technology: Anti-Matter Trapped?

June 8, 2011 by Hannibal Tabu Leave a Comment

Scientists can trap antimatter atoms and study them! They maybe able to figure out just how this universe came to be.

The achievement is a significant improvement on earlier attempts to trap antihydrogen, which like all antimatter has a tendency to disappear before scientists have time to examine it.

"We went from two-tenths of a second to 1,000 seconds," said American scientist Jeffrey Hangst, a spokesman for the ALPHA research team working at the world's biggest particle physics lab – known by its French acronym CERN – on the Swiss-French border.

The team improved the efficiency of the antimatter trap by cooling antihydrogen atoms down to less than 0.5 degrees above absolute zero. Their research was published online in the journal Nature Physics.

Hangst said extending the lifetime of antihydrogen means scientists can be sure it has enough time to settle so it can be probed and compared with hydrogen atoms. The team will begin firing microwaves and then lasers at trapped antihydrogen later this year.

[Source: Huffington Post]

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About Hannibal Tabu

Born in Rockford, Illinois; raised in Memphis, Tennessee; matriculated in
Tacoma, Washington and broadcasting live from Los Angeles, Hannibal Tabu is
a writer, a brother, a husband, a misanthrope, a son, an emcee, an uncle, a
poet, a father, a designer, a nephew, a romantic, a storyteller, and by
god, a fan. He spent more than ten years doing the journalist thing for
Vibe, Slave Trade, MTV Online, Rap Pages, America Online, the Los Angeles
Sentinel, Spinnerrack.com, Speak and The Source. Hannibal has worked as a
web designer/producer and graphic artist for American Honda, eHobbies.com,
Quicken.com, Express.com, the California Association of REALTORS, Disney
Channel, NextPlanetOver.com, Toyota Motor Sales, Kaiser Permanente,
California Bank & Trust and many more. As a poet, Hannibal has been
published in The Drumming Between Us, (sic) Vice Verse, Drumvoices Review,
Voices From Leimert Park and other anthologies, as well as being author of
the collection BORN BENEATH AN ANGRY STAR and co-author of FLIGHT MANUAL.
As a novelist, he's written THE CROWN: ASCENSION and FARAWAY (both
available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble & Smashwords) and the upcoming sci fi
political thriller ROGUE NATION. He's the winner of the 2012 Top Cow Talent Hunt, writer of Waso: Will To Power for Stranger Comics, Project: Wildfire for Legends Press, and co-writer of an issue of Watson & Holmes (alongside 2 Guns writer Steven Grant) for New Paradigm Studios. For six years he was the editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch group of newspapers, is currently the co-owner and editor-in-chief of Black geek website Komplicated at the Good
Men Project, and uses his Operative Network website (www.operative.net) to
publish his poetry, market what he's doing, rant at the world and emit
strangled cries for help. In addition to all that, Hannibal collects comic
books, has scores of action figures, DJs private parties, is a Mac OS
zealot, sings and sometimes even hosts karaoke, practices a form of
spirituality based on ancient Egyptian belief, and goes to bed every day,
secretly hoping that half the world will commit suicide in his honor.