Antimatter is believed to play a huge part in the story of our universe.
Yet, as far as we can tell,its not.
To venture to unravel this cosmic mystery, physicists are studyingvarious featuresof antimatter.
But studying antimatter is incredibly difficult.
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Our experiments could be a significant step in solving the mystery of the missing antimatter in our universe.
Making antimatter
Just as matter is made up of atoms, antimatter is made up of antiatoms.
The easiest antiatom to make is antihydrogen,first createdby Cern in 1995 andfirst measuredin 2012.
Read more:Explainer: what is antimatter?
But making antihydrogen isnt easy.
Particle accelerators can be used to create antiprotons.
This makes each antiproton we make incredibly precious.
Once wed created enough antiprotons, we needed antielectrons (positrons) so that build our antiatoms.
Happily, positrons can be quite easily gathered from aradioactive source.
With our core ingredients collected, we just needed to combine them.
This we achieved by forcing the antiprotons and positrons into contact within an electromagnetic trap.
This demonstration of our electromagnetic trap shows how the forces it creates can hold charged particles in space.
Seen here are four electrodes around a laser.
What were looking to measure here is a key atomic transition between two energy states of the antihydrogen atom.
We took our antihydrogen measurement to 12 decimal places of precision.
By reducing this movement further, our measurements would be far more accurate.
Our experiment achieved this, for the first time, by blasting the antiatoms with laser light.
Liquid helium helps cool antihydrogen in our trap but lasers help reduce the temperature further.
Here, A man inserts a rod into a container of liquid hydrogen in a lab.
When an atom absorbs a photon, the atoms velocity changes slightly.
