Studying The Strangest Thing That Exists: Antimatter

Antimatter has been studied by various researchers from all over the world for a long time. One of them recently discovered a new method that could solve one of the biggest mysteries surrounding antimatter, storing it. The biggest issue in experimental physics when it comes to antimatter is how to obtain it. This is mainly because after a very short contact with anything made of what we call matter this substance disappears almost instantly. This is the main reason why the discovery of a Canadian researcher is about to revolutionize the world of physics. He has come up with a laser that would enable scientists to freeze antimatter, which means it could then be analyzed and compared with regular atoms, the ones we all know.

The name of the researcher is Makoto Fujiwara and even though hits proposal has not yet been tested in practice, there were various computer simulations that reveled his idea could actually be implemented fairly soon. The main idea behind his invention is that anti-hydrogen atoms could be frozen at temperatures bigger than what we call absolute zero. Properties such as the weight or the color of the strangest substance surrounding us could then be analyzed in detail. The last major progress in terms of studying antimatter was made by researchers at CERN, who managed to keep the anti-hydrogen atoms still for no less than 15 minutes, using special magnets. 2011 was also the year when the energy of such particles was eventually measured. At the end of 2012 Fujiwara and his team of researchers began testing the hypothesis with a laser system developed especially for this purpose. Antimatter was discovered in 1933, even though its existence was predicted three years before this moment. What scientists know already is that when an antiparticle and a particle meet an explosion is created and they both disappear. The main question currently in the mind of almost every scientist is why the universe contains so much matter and so little antimatter. At the moment of the Big Bang, it is believed that antimatter and matter were created in equal amounts, but it is not yet known why antimatter is so rare nowadays. Currently antimatter has various useful applications, being used in medical scanners, for example.

The development of this new laser system could also eventually lead to finding an answer to the most important question us humans have about the universe, why it exists and whether it is just a big light flash. “At this point, antihidrogen atoms are moving very fast and we are unable to measure their gravitational properties. With the technique called laser cooling, we could get closer to this goal,” Fujiwara said. Unfortunately, the special laser machinery needs to be built from scratch and it may take some time before the idea can be put into practice. The ultimate goal of the project could be to study the weight and color of antimatter, as well as the gravitational properties of such particles.