As you might guess, measuring antimatter is rather tricky: it’s destroyed the moment it comes into contact with regular matter, so conventional approaches just aren’t going to cut it. Give credit to CERN, then, as its Alpha group just measured antimatter for the first time. The team stuffed positrons (positively charged electrons) and antiprotons (protons with a negative charge) into a vacuum tube to create antihydrogen, with a “magnetic trap” keeping a small number of the anti-atoms in existence for long enough to measure them. The team then blasted the antimatter with a laser to study its positrons as they shifted energy levels, producing a spectral line.
via Engadget
