Antimatter particles are almost identical to their normal matter counterparts, except they carry the opposite charge and momentum.
Though it’s an extremely rare substance, physicists routinely generate antiparticles in particle accelerators. Antimatter is also created naturally in high-energy processes, such as near the event horizons of black holes.
How and why the Universe ended up consisting almost entirely of normal matter is an unsolved mystery.
It’s extremely difficult and expensive to create antimatter. The European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) produces antimatter in its Antiproton Decelerator instrument, in which a beam of protons slams into a metal target to create antiprotons.
But even this produces no more than a few tens of thousands of particles.
The problem with antimatter is that it completely annihilates itself in a puff of energy when it comes into contact with ordinary matter. So, preventing annihilation and storing it for any length of time is a technical challenge.
CERN engineers plan to store (and even transport) small quantities of antiprotons, however.
To do this they’ll cool the antiprotons to about -269ºC (-452.2°F) to almost stop them moving, then suspend them with superconducting magnets in a very-high vacuum enclosure (to prevent contact with ordinary matter).
All this needs to be done while retaining the ability to extract the particles or inject other particles into the enclosure.
Despite the technical challenges, CERN hopes to create a ‘trap’ that can store up to a billion antiprotons for weeks at a time. Recently, the technique was proven by transporting normal matter by truck across the CERN site in Switzerland.
With improvements in the vacuum systems, the storage and transport of antimatter should be routine within the next year or so.
This article is an answer to the question (asked by Layton Haas, Hamburg) 'How is antimatter stored?'
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