Scientists in Geneva, Switzerland claimed to have trapped antimatter for the first time this week. The international team at the CERN lab created an atom of anti-hydrogen, capturing it long enough to actually study the thing.
“This field is 20 years old and has been making incremental progress toward exactly this all along the way,” Jeffrey Hangst, an American scientist and spokesman for the team told the press. “We really think that this was the most difficult step.”
Antimatter, which was created during the Big Bang (along with all of the, you know, regular matter), has seemingly largely disappeared for the past several billion years or so.
The scientists have yet to actually say how long they were able to hold onto the illusive anti-atom, but they assure us that they were “much, much longer than a tenth of a second.” His words:
“Unfortunately I can’t tell you how long, because we haven’t published the number yet,” Hangst said. “But I can tell you that it’s much, much longer than a tenth of a second. Within human comprehension on a real clock.”
“Much, much longer than a death of a second” is pretty good when you’re dealing with materials that are known to disappear instantly after being created.