TORONTO, November 17, 2010 – A York University professor is among an international group of scientists that has successfully trapped antihydrogen atoms for the first time, according to a paper published today in Nature.
The experiment, conducted at CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, used magnetic fields to trap the antimatter atoms for a tenth of a second – long enough to study them.
Antimatter – or the lack of it – is one of the biggest mysteries of science. During the Big Bang, matter and antimatter should have been created in equal amounts. “The question is, ‘why are we left only with matter? Where did all the antimatter go?’ Successfully trapping antihydrogen is a huge step forward,” says Scott Menary, professor in York’s Department of Physics & Astronomy, Faculty of Science & Engineering. “It opens up a whole new avenue for comparing and understanding matter and antimatter,” he says.
The most direct route to answering that question is to take one of the best-known systems in physics, the hydrogen atom – consisting of one proton and one electron – and check whether its antimatter counterpart, antihydrogen, behaves exactly the same way.
Menary works on the Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus experiment, dubbed ALPHA, at CERN. The Nature paper is published by the physicists of the ALPHA collaboration, with a major Canadian component, including scientists from University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, the University of Calgary, and Canada's national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, TRIUMF. Of the paper’s 42 authors, 15 are Canadian.
Scientists at CERN were able to make antihydrogen almost a decade ago, but they couldn’t study it; antimatter annihilates when it comes into contact with matter, converting to energy and other particles. ALPHA scientists succeeded by constructing a sophisticated “magnetic bottle” using a state-of-the-art superconducting magnet to suspend the antiatoms away from the walls of the device and keep them isolated long enough to study them.
Still, some might ask, why put all this effort into studying something we can’t perceive?
“That’s how it is with scientific discovery. You don’t know what will come out of it, precisely. It’s a long-term investment,” Menary says.
Makoto Fujiwara, research scientist and spokesperson for ALPHA-Canada, notes that the group is already pushing ahead with new experiments on the trapped antihydrogen. “As we speak, we are trying to measure, for the first time, what colour antimatter atoms shine," he says, referring to attempts to apply microwave spectroscopy to antihydrogen. This effort is the next step in determining its atomic structure in detail, which could give new clues on why there is so much something, rather than a lot of nothing, in the universe.
Financial support for ALPHA-Canada came from NSERC (National Science and Engineering Research Council, TRIUMF, AIF (Alberta Ingenuity Fund) and FQRNT (Le Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies).
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Media Contact:
Melissa Hughes, Media Relations, York University, 416 736 2100 x22097, mehughes@yorku.ca
About TRIUMF
TRIUMF is Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics. Located on the south campus of the University of British Columbia, TRIUMF is owned and operated as a joint venture by a consortium of the following Canadian universities, via a contribution through the National Research Council Canada: University of Alberta, University of British Columbia, University of Calgary, Carleton University, University of Guelph, University of Manitoba, McMaster University, Université de Montréal, Queen’s University, University of Regina, Saint Mary’s University, Simon Fraser University, University of Toronto, University of Victoria, and York University.
About ALPHA and ALPHA-Canada
ALPHA is a collaboration of 42 physicists from 15 institutions from Canada, Brazil, Denmark, Israel, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. ALPHA-Canada currently consists of senior scientists, graduate students, and professional staff from five Canadian institutions. The ALPHA-Canada co-authors of the reported Nature paper are: Andrea Gutierrez, Sarah Seif El Nasr, Walter Hardy (University of British Columbia), Tim Friesen, Richard Hydomako, Robert Thompson (University of Calgary), Mohammad Ashkezari, Michael Hayden (Simon Fraser University), Scott Menary (York University), Makoto Fujiwara, David Gill, Leonid Kurchaninov, Konstantin Olchanski, Art Olin, James Storey (TRIUMF). Spokesperson Makoto Fujiwara is also an adjunct professor in Calgary.
