Culture-boggling devices like the laser and transistor emerged from efforts to solve basic physics problems, and the quest for an antimatter container has already produced new methods of analyzing medical drugs and ways to better shield medical imaging equipment from stray magnetic fields. They also might cause physicists to scrap all their theories of how the universe operates.Īlthough no one is making any claims at this point, practical applications might come from the research. Such comparisons could show why antimatter and matter have not destroyed each other in other words why there’s a universe at all.
“We have obtained the first glimpse inside an antihydrogen atom, and this is a significant step on the way to precision measurements that will allow matter/antimatter comparisons to be made,” says Gerald Gabrielse, professor of physics at Harvard and leader of the research team.
For the first time, antimatter atoms have been slowed down enough to look inside them. This month, a Harvard-led research team published two reports in the journal Physical Review Letters that describe a giant step in this direction. When the two meet, they annihilate each other in a burst of energy that thrusts the starship from galaxy to galaxy.īack in the 21st century, however, physicists still struggle with the problems of making antimatter and finding a container to put it in.
The Starship Enterprise is propelled through the universe of science fiction by a rocket fuel that combines ordinary matter and antimatter. Physicist Gerald Gabrielse works on a device that traps antihydrogen atoms at temperatures of minus 469 degrees.
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