CERN wants to research antimatter – what a truck has to do with it
Researchers at CERN want to use sophisticated technology to transport and study antimatter. The experiments are intended to help solve puzzles in physics.
(Image: Shutterstock)
Antimatter plays a central role in the film adaptation of Dan Brown's thriller "Illuminati": a contract killer steals an antimatter container from the European nuclear research institute CERN and wants to use it as a bomb. Because when antimatter comes into contact with matter, it makes a big bang. Annihilation" ensures that matter and antimatter are converted into energy in one fell swoop – Half a gram of antimatter has the explosive power of a nuclear bomb.
The real research
Much of the scenario is dramatically exaggerated, but antimatter really does exist. It really is produced at CERN, and it has to be strictly isolated from the outside world so that it does not annihilate. As early as next year, antiparticles are to be transported across the CERN campus in a truck for the first time in order to examine them more closely in two experiments, reports Nature.
The great mystery of antimatter
One of the great unsolved mysteries of physics is the question of why the universe as we know it consists of matter, which in turn leads to the question of whether there really is no difference between matter and antimatter.
According to this theory, matter and antimatter are merely two possible solutions to the relativistic formulation of the famous Schrödinger equation. The wave functions of particles and antiparticles only differ in the sign of a quantum number – The anti-matter equivalent of an electron, for example, is a particle with the same mass, the same spin, but the opposite charge: the positron.
Transport goods: anti-matter particles
(Image:Â Marina Cavazza, CERN)
In the Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment (BASE), researchers initially want to use extremely precise measurements to investigate whether protons and antiprotons have the same magnetic properties. To make this possible, however, they need to move the antiprotons generated in the CERN accelerator ring to a location where there are fewer interference signals. BASE-STEP is the first step in this direction. In the experiment, it is planned to transport around 1,000 antiprotons in an experimental set-up weighing one ton. In order to transport the antimatter safely, the physicists hold the particles in position in vacuum vessels with magnetic fields so that they float without touching the walls. The fields are generated by superconducting magnets, and a cooling system keeps the antiprotons at a temperature of four Kelvin (–269 °C). The apparatus was successfully tested for the first time at the end of October – but so far only with normal protons.
In the second experiment, to which a billion antiprotons are transported, the aim is to investigate the inner structure of atomic nuclei. Antiprotons will collide with neutrons and protons, and the decay products can then be analyzed. The larger number of antiprotons in the PUMA-titled experiment and the equipment needed to inject isotopes and detect annihilation mean that PUMA requires a much larger trap system than BASE-STEP, which includes ten tons of equipment. The heavy truck will have to travel a winding, 1.5-kilometer route.
This article first appeared on t3n.de . (ds)
