Antimatter could travel by truck, a test with protons shows

A truck full of antimatter would make for a seriously epic road trip. And scientists are now one step closer to hauling the substance by motor vehicle.

Scientists at the European laboratory CERN have demonstrated the ability to transport a cloud of subatomic particles aboard a truck, using protons as a stand-in for their antimatter counterparts, antiprotons. These particles have the same mass as protons but opposite electric charge.

Several experiments at CERN study antiprotons to check for any unexpected discrepancies with their matter partners (SN: 1/5/22). Such studies, scientists hope, could lead to a better understanding of why matter is common but antimatter is rare, a major physics mystery (SN: 9/22/22).

But antiprotons are a precious resource — CERN, near Geneva, is the only place where the particles can be trapped and studied. Scientists would like the option to take them elsewhere, to access outside equipment and ideal experimental conditions.

Antimatter is a delicate substance, annihilating upon contact with normal matter. So it must be suspended by electromagnetic fields in a vacuum chamber. Scientists with the BASE-STEP project designed a trap that could do that while bumping along down the road and that was small enough to fit on a truck.

Physicists used the trap to successfully schlep a cloud of 70 protons on a trip of about 4 kilometers around the laboratory site and back again, CERN announced October 25. A future experiment will test antiprotons, with the eventual goal of distributing them to labs throughout Europe.