Cool Baryons: Despite hosting the world's only "factory" for antiprotons, CERN's facilities cannot provide the precision needed to effectively study these elusive antiparticles. However, the European institute is now rapidly developing a "mobile apparatus" to safely transport antiprotons to external research centers.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research has announced a major breakthrough in making antimatter more portable – almost like something you could ship via Amazon. Researchers at the Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment have successfully transported a small number of antiprotons across CERN's main site, and they are now working to extend deliveries to other European laboratories.
The BASE team has been developing this antimatter transport capability for some time. After completing initial tests with protons last year, the scientists have now successfully moved a cloud of 92 antiprotons within a truck. The antiparticles were stored in a "portable" cryogenic container known as a Penning trap, where they were isolated from the external environment using superconducting magnets, liquid helium-based cryogenic cooling, and a vacuum chamber.
"Portable," in this case, means the Penning trap weighs 1,000 kilograms. According to BASE researchers, the device is far more compact than other existing systems designed for antimatter research. Antimatter particles are naturally prone to annihilation upon contact with ordinary matter, which makes them extremely difficult to study, even within CERN's advanced facilities.
The BASE initiative was conceived to study the magnetic moments and charge-to-mass ratios of protons and antiprotons with high precision, searching for differences between the two types of particles. Antiparticles have reversed charge and parity compared to their corresponding particles made of ordinary matter, making them central to research into one of modern physics' great unsolved problems: baryon asymmetry.
BASE researchers explained that the machines at CERN's antimatter facility can generate tiny magnetic fields that interfere with precise antimatter measurements. These fluctuations are on the order of one billionth of a tesla – about 20,000 times weaker than Earth's magnetic field.
According to BASE spokesman Stefan Ulmer, "The precision of the measurements taken in BASE is such that gaining an even deeper understanding of the fundamental properties of antiprotons will require moving the experiment out of the building."
After successfully transporting a Penning trap filled with antiprotons around CERN, the team is now working to further improve their transportation capabilities. Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and other laboratories across Europe can provide high-precision measurements of antiprotons. BASE's next step will require enough portable power to continuously cool the superconducting trap below 8.2 Kelvin (−264.95 °C) for the entire journey to the public university in North Rhine-Westphalia.
CERN scientists successfully turned an antiproton trap into a moving appliance
