Scientists trap and tame a single particle of antimatter for months
https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2026/10/scientists-trap-and-tame-a-single-particle-of-antimatter-for-monthsOpen linkView original on sh.itjust.worksSyndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.
View original on sh.itjust.workshttps://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2026/10/scientists-trap-and-tame-a-single-particle-of-antimatter-for-monthsOpen linkView original on sh.itjust.works
36 replies
This is actually really exciting! I fucking love anti-matter, always been fascinated by it.
If anti-matter can exist, why is our universe made of matter? This is the Baryon Asymmetry question that this research seeks to answer. The team has proven they can isolate a single positron. The next step is to measure it to as much accuracy as they have with the electron. Perhaps they will find differences!
Summer '25 CERN showed that anti-matter baryons (protons, neutrons, etc) decay differently - link. So there's a good chance they might find something!
Would love to actually see anti-matter but that's a long way off. Really hope anti-matter likes to stick together and we could actually build atoms out of it. Would be crazy to study the properties of anti-water! Maybe that's just science fiction. In any case, very excited for the coming research!
"Would love to actually see anti-matter" - are you being literal here? because that would require a vacuum between your eyes and antimatter that emits at a visible frequency. Not entirely impossible, but detection and recording of an anti-hydrogen transition wavelength is more easily achievable. This might be no more than an LCD display indicating a non-zero number though. Exciting for sure, but not necessarily a visual spectacle.
I always assume it's the same reason why are have mostly right handed people. It's just that the scales tipped at some point and it had to go down one way from that point.
Yeah probably but the important bit is why!
Good point about right handedness! That is actually quite fascinating as well because in most other primates it's a 50/50 split.
Turns out walking is probably the major factor and our brains created the split - link. Still more questions though lol
Not gonna be impressed until they teach it to fetch.
Poor particle did nothing bad
No Bad Particles: Physics the Woodhouse Way.
This is anti-electron astroturfing right here, verging on hate speech.
how did this get past the ethics committee
Won't somebody please think of the
childrenantimatter?!If movies have taught me anything, that particle isn’t tame. It’s just waiting for it’s moment.
Antimatter matters!
Did they ask for consent?
Man the two things I would have liked from the article is how much total energy did this cost to do. Im guessing if it was up scaled it should not cost much more than doing a single particle although I guess more magnetic power do to gravity. Then also it does not say why it only lasted that long. Did they intentionally stop or did something stop working and a particle of regular matter managed to touch it.
Probably about 0.03 AI data centers.
that would be way to much. Data centers are huge and energy intensive. If this was using 3% of the power of a datacenter just to keep one antimatter particle isolated. ugh.
This is just a guess but i reckon they got the data they needed from the experiment so they chose to end it. This is one step in a larger body of work. One of the team members has measured the magnetic moment of the electron extremely precisely and wants to do the same with a positron. I believe this experiment was to show they can capture and manipulate a positron for an extended period of time. Now they can move on to the real measurements!
Im not so sure. creating antimatter is not trivial. if they could keep it contained indefinately at little cost it would be kept to use with other experiments. Maybe that is why its stopped. To be used with another experiment. I just would like to know why and what its final dispensation was.
A positron gets created by radioactive decay. Certainly the process to make an appropriate isotope (Sodium 22) is not trivial but the creation anti-matter will just happen.
Capturing it and storing it is the hard part which the team proved they can do. As they were working with a single positron and have developed the procedure for capturing one there is no reason to keep it for further experiments.
so again. if the energy used to capture is trivial to the energy used to contain. I want to know that. What im really looking for is the practicality of long term storage.
Ah sorry i get you! Yeah like how long could we go? Indefinitely?
Looking at the photo the equipment does seem quite large, it takes up the whole room. Can say for sure they don't have the funding to dedicate that much equipment to a static experiment.
Do agree with you though. Would be interesting to see the numbers for long term storage.
yeah and you might be on to something. they might already have ideas to reduce the size or complexity and might follow up using a different design. I have been involved in a lot of projects with a large and ugly prototype to prove some stuff and then greater effort is put into design once they know the idea works.
Aw yeah for sure they could make it more compact! Would love to see it. If we could actually make meaningful quantities of anti-matter. Could we use it for power? What would transport look like? Anti-matter is one of my favourite subjects lol
What does near absolute zero mean for a single quantum particle?
Slow particle. Better chance of observing it.
For someone knowing jack about this matter^huehue
How big would be the "explosion" if it would touch matter?
An electron meeting a positron will apparently release 1.022 MeV of energy. I'm no physicist but my understanding is that this isn't huge (it converts to 1.637×10⁻¹³ Joules). For comparison, fission of a uranium-235 nucleus releases about 200 MeV.
ELI5
A zap like a fly in an electrical flytrap or more like a small firecracker?
you wouldn't feel it
a single particle almost nothing. if it was a gram though it would be bad.
Or good. We all love big booms! Especially if they are done for science!
very smol.
Scientists in 2026: “let’s see how long we can hold onto this extremely angry piece of energy that is absolutely incompatible with our known existence and stability by every metric up until now. It’s probably gonna work, it might not go boom.”
someone has to draw that particle on a leash, all tied up, gagged, cumming hard
I can, but I don't want to do that
with puppy ears