Antimatter can travel by truck, proton test shows

A truck full of antimatter would make for a seriously epic road trip. And scientists are now one step closer to transporting the substance in vehicles.

Scientists at the European laboratory CERN have demonstrated the ability to transport a cloud of subatomic particles on board a truck, using protons as a support for their antimatter counterparts, the antiprotons. These particles have the same mass as protons, but opposite electric charge.

Several experiments at CERN study antiprotons to check for any unexpected mismatches with their matter partners (SN: 1/5/22). Such studies, scientists hope, can lead to a better understanding of why matter is common but antimatter is rare, a great physics mystery.SN: 22.9.22).

But antiprotons are a precious resource – CERN, near Geneva, is the only place where the particles can be trapped and studied. Scientists would like the option to take them elsewhere, to access external equipment and ideal experimental conditions.

Antimatter is a subtle substance that is destroyed by contact with normal matter. So it must be suspended from the electromagnetic field in a vacuum chamber. Scientists with the BASE-STEP project designed a trap that could do this while bumping along the road and that was small enough to fit in a truck.

Physicists used the trap to successfully throw a cloud of 70 protons on a journey of about 4 kilometers around the lab site and back again, CERN announced on October 25. An upcoming experiment will test antiprotons, with the ultimate goal of distributing them to laboratories across Europe.