Getting to the bottom of the (anti) matter

In the movie Angels and Demons, scientists have solved one of the most perplexing scientific problems: the capture and storage of antimatter. In real life, this has never been accomplished. 

But the race to be the first to solve this mystery is going on full tilt at CERN, the world's largest particle physics lab, located in the northwest suburbs of Geneva, Switzerland. There are two teams -- ATRAP and ALPHA -- in hot pursuit of one another in this very competitive race. Although both have members from around the world as well as from Canada, the latter involves of a handful of U of C scientists. 

Rob Thompson, an associate professor in Department of Physics and Astronomy and co-investigator in the ALPHA Collaboration, says a big part of the motivation to capture and store antimatter is to give scientists more of a fundamental understanding of nature.   

“There should be as much antimatter out there as there is matter but we don’t know where the antimatter is, where it went and why there appears to be more matter than antimatter,” says Thompson who has been on the ALPHA team since the collaboration began four years ago. “But once we are able to store it and study it, we will determine whether our physical models are complete or flawed.” 

In the movie, antimatter is seen as a threat, a mini-nuclear bomb of sorts. Not only have the scientists on the big screen discovered how to capture it, they can move it. The villain steals it from CERN and takes it to Rome with the intent of blowing up the city.  

Should we be worried? Thompson shakes his head and chuckles. “Our apparatus weighs several tonnes and creates microscopic amounts of antimatter.” Scientists estimate it would take billions of years to produce enough antimatter for a bomb having the same destructiveness as ‘typical’ hydrogen bombs. 

Antimatter could only become a source of energy if a large amount is discovered lying around somewhere in the same way we find oil and oxygen lying around on Earth. Eventually, scientists hope they will be able to use antimatter, also referred to as anti-hydrogen atoms, as high-precision tools. 

The first problem is capturing the stuff. Antimatter explodes when meets it matter, that’s why it’s so tough to contain. The main difficulty seems to be to produce anti-hydrogen atoms that are cold enough to be trapped in the team’s magnetic trap. The trap can only hold atoms that have a temperature lower than 272 degrees below zero. 

From the outside observer, it really doesn’t look like a high-tech, experiment going on. It looks more like a small train of snow-covered tank cars, wired to more electronic monitors than you would find in all of the intensive care wards at Foothills Medical Centre put together. 

Perhaps this is why film director Ron Howard didn’t choose any shots of the real experiment going on in CERN. 

But, if the ALPHA team figures out a way to store antimatter, the returns to science will be more exciting than the movie. 

“Working with antimatter is exciting stuff for me. We are breaking new ground, no one has done anything like this before,” says Makoto Fujiwara, an adjunct professor at in physics and astronomy at the U of C and the ALPHA Canada spokesperson. “Rob’s team from Calgary is making great contributions and his PhD student Richard Hydomako is making a crucial contribution and without him, we wouldn't be where we are now."

 

For more info regarding the large Hadron Collider  and the science of the movie click here.