Scientists from the BASE experiment at the world-famous CERN facility, which is home to the Large Hadron Collider, have announced the first-ever successful transport of a magnetic trap filled with 92 antimatter antiprotons across the laboratory’s main site.
The research team behind the historic antimatter transport said the event is a critical milestone on the road to the “ultimate aim” of delivering antiprotons created at CERN to other European laboratories for more detailed research that the facility cannot perform.
“Our aim with BASE-STEP is to be able to trap antiprotons and deliver them to our precision laboratories at a dedicated space at CERN, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU), Leibniz University Hannover, and perhaps other laboratories that are capable of performing very-high-precision antiproton measurements, which unfortunately is not possible in the antimatter factory,” explained Christian Smorra, the Leader of BASE-STEP. “We validated the feasibility of the project with protons last year, but what we achieved today with antiprotons is a huge leap forward towards our objective.”
Potential Antimatter ‘Annihilation’ Makes Transportation Challenging
First postulated in 1932, antimatter is an almost identical class of particles to the particles that make up everyday matter. However, in antimatter particles, the electric charge and other properties, including magnetic moment, are reversed
According to the standard model of particle physics, the Big Bang is thought to have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter. When these antimatter and matter particles meet, they annihilate one another. In theory, these annihilations should have left behind an empty universe devoid of either class of particle. Still, as evidenced by the presence of stars, planets, and every other material aspect of the known universe, an excess of matter was left behind.
Physicists have debated the cause of the disequilibrium for decades, but have lacked the tools to determine the exact cause. For example, antiprotons, like those transported by the BASE experiment team, may have slightly different properties from regular protons, which scientists have been unable to study due to the difficulty of producing and controlling antimatter particles.
According to a CERN statement, its facility’s “antimatter factory” is the world’s leading facility for producing, storing, and studying antiprotons. In its current formation, the CERN facility can produce antiprotons with the Antiproton Decelerator (AD) and the Extra Low Energy Antiproton ring (ELENA).
According to CERN, these successive decelerators can provide “low energy” antiprotons that are easier to store and study than higher energy ones. Unfortunately, the very nature of the massive facility has limited the ability to study these antimatter particles in sufficient detail.
BASE spokesperson Stefan Ulmer said CERN’s machines generate magnetic field fluctuations that “limit how far we can push our precision measurements.” Although these minuscule fluctuations are 20,000 times smaller than the Earth’s magnetic field, on the order of one billionth of a tesla, they can still adversely influence antimatter experiments.
“The precision of the measurements taken in BASE is such that gaining an even deeper understanding of the fundamental properties of antiprotons will require moving the experiment out of the building,” Ulmer explained.
Trap and Travel for Analysis at European Labs
After setting a record by successfully confining antimatter for over a year, the team said they were ready to move on to the next stage: transporting the stored antimatter in a truck to simulate moving it to another research facility. This effort resulted in the BASE-STEP trap.
To keep the antimatter particles suspended in a vacuum so they do not collide with any ordinary matter, including the trap itself, and annihilate, the 1,000-kilogram (2,200-pound) device is equipped with a superconducting magnet cooled by a liquid helium cryogenic cooling system. The device also features a battery backup to maintain power even if the primary system fails.
According to the team’s statement, the antimatter trap is “ This reduced size means the trap is small enough to be loaded onto a truck and transported to another facility, where it can fit through a standard laboratory door. Critically, the device is designed to withstand the jolts and vibrations expected during a lengthy road trip.
“(The trap) is supposed to contain these antiprotons no matter what: if the truck stops, if it starts again, if it has to slam on the brakes — all that,” CERN spokeswoman Sophie Tesauri explained.
“We Are at the Beginning of an Exciting Scientific Journey”
Although the explosive potential of antimatter has been portrayed in TV and movies, the research team said the small number of antiprotons in the trap was not enough to cause an explosion if the magnetic containment failed and they collided with the container walls. The only risk in transport is losing the antiprotons.
While the test drive lasted roughly 4 hours, team member Christian Smorra said their first destination, the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf (HHU) lab in Germany, which is capable of performing very high-precision measurements of antiproton properties, is about 8 hours away. The researcher said a trip of this length would require keeping the superconducting magnet below 8.2 degrees Kelvin for the entire trip/
“So, in addition to the liquid helium, we’d need to have a generator to power a cryocooler on the truck,” Smorra said, adding that the team is “currently investigating this possibility.”
The BASE experiment team noted that after the latest experiments, the biggest challenge remains transferring the antiprotons from the trap to the experiment without them “vanishing.” Still, the team’s successful test has added some optimism to the prospect of a long-haul trip to a partner facility, where the secrets of the universe’s leftover matter may finally be revealed.
“Transporting antimatter is a pioneering and ambitious project, and I congratulate the BASE collaboration on this impressive milestone,” added CERN Director for Research and Computing, Gautier Hamel de Monchenault. “We are at the beginning of an exciting scientific journey that will allow us to further deepen our understanding of antimatter.”
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.