CERN?s achievement of isolating anti-matter is the stuff of science fiction, and has great potential
Most of the activity in Angels & Demons, Dan Brown?s bestselling thriller, was around the fact that Vatican City was going to be destroyed by an anti-matter bomb hidden somewhere in the city, rigged to blow in 24 hours. In fact, anti-matter has been a favourite tool in many science fiction stories, as well. Star Trek?s famous warp drive, the faster-than-light-speed mode of travel, used anti-matter as fuel. However, anti-matter can be harnessed like this only in stories, the main hindrance to doing anything constructive with it in reality being that it explodes when it comes into contact with any form of matter (the stuff that makes up the universe), even thin air. It is this fact that makes CERN?s achievement of isolating anti-matter for 1,000 seconds all the more remarkable. Anti-matter is basically the same as matter, except its electrical charges are opposite. While an electron has a negative charge, its anti-particle, called the positron, has a positive charge, but exactly the same mass. The same holds for the proton and anti-proton. What makes CERN?s achievement so important is a question that has troubled scientists for many years.
According to quantum physics, at the moment of creation, there would have been the same amounts of matter and anti-matter created. Now, if this was the case, they should have annihilated each other, leaving nothing. But here we are, matter-filled beings, and the universe we see today is dominated by matter. What happened? Was there a subtle shift in the balance between the two? Scientists never really figured it out. But isolating anti-matter for such long periods of time (last year, the same scientists managed to capture anti-matter for only 172 milliseconds) will make it easier to study and answer one of the basic questions of life: How are we here?