Nov 19, 2025 07:36 PM
(This post was last modified: Nov 19, 2025 07:55 PM by C C.)
But don't expect antimatter rocket propulsion anytime soon.
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Breakthrough in antimatter production
https://home.cern/news/news/experiments/...production
EXCERPTS: In a paper published today in Nature Communications, researchers at the ALPHA experiment at CERN’s Antimatter Factory report a new technique that allows them to produce over 15 000 antihydrogen atoms – the simplest form of atomic antimatter – in a matter of hours.
“These numbers would have been considered science fiction 10 years ago,” said Jeffrey Hangst, spokesperson for the ALPHA experiment. “With larger numbers of antihydrogen atoms now more readily available, we can investigate atomic antimatter in greater detail and at a faster pace than before.”
To create atomic antihydrogen (a positron orbiting an antiproton), the ALPHA collaboration must produce and trap clouds of antiprotons and positrons separately, then cool them down and merge them so that antihydrogen atoms can form. This process has been refined and steadily improved over many years. But now, using a pioneering technique to cool the positrons, the ALPHA team has increased the rate of production of antihydrogen atoms eightfold.
This spectacular advance in the production rate is all down to how the positrons are prepared. [...] Using this approach for cooling positrons, the ALPHA experiment produced over 2 million antihydrogen atoms over the course of the experimental runs of 2023–24... (MORE - missing details)
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Breakthrough in antimatter production
https://home.cern/news/news/experiments/...production
EXCERPTS: In a paper published today in Nature Communications, researchers at the ALPHA experiment at CERN’s Antimatter Factory report a new technique that allows them to produce over 15 000 antihydrogen atoms – the simplest form of atomic antimatter – in a matter of hours.
“These numbers would have been considered science fiction 10 years ago,” said Jeffrey Hangst, spokesperson for the ALPHA experiment. “With larger numbers of antihydrogen atoms now more readily available, we can investigate atomic antimatter in greater detail and at a faster pace than before.”
To create atomic antihydrogen (a positron orbiting an antiproton), the ALPHA collaboration must produce and trap clouds of antiprotons and positrons separately, then cool them down and merge them so that antihydrogen atoms can form. This process has been refined and steadily improved over many years. But now, using a pioneering technique to cool the positrons, the ALPHA team has increased the rate of production of antihydrogen atoms eightfold.
This spectacular advance in the production rate is all down to how the positrons are prepared. [...] Using this approach for cooling positrons, the ALPHA experiment produced over 2 million antihydrogen atoms over the course of the experimental runs of 2023–24... (MORE - missing details)