On the road with antiprotons: CERN runs delicate test on transporting ultrasensitive antimatter

GENEVA (AP) — Scientists in Geneva are taking some antiprotons out for a spin — a very delicate one — in a truck, in a never-tried-before test drive.

If this so-called antimatter comes into contact with actual matter — even for a fraction of an instant — it will be annihilated in a quick flash of energy. So experts at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, will, over the course of four hours Tuesday, gingerly wheel out from its lab about 100 antiprotons. They are suspended in a vacuum inside a specially designed box and held in place by supercooled magnets.

Then, they'll ease it into a truck, and take about a half-hour drive to test how — if at all — the infinitesimal particles can be transported by road without seeping out. If all goes well, the antiprotons will be returned back to the lab.

The hard part: Manipulating antimatter, like antiprotons, can be tricky business. As scientists understand the universe today, for every type particle that exists, there is a corresponding antiparticle, exactly matching the particle but with an opposite charge.

If those opposites come into contact, they “annihilate” each other, setting off lots of energy, depending on the masses involved. Any bumps in the road on the test journey that aren't compensated for by the specially-designed box could spoil the whole exercise.

Tuesday’s practice is a first step toward making good on hopes, one day, to deliver CERN antiprotons to researchers at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany, which is about eight hours away in normal driving conditions.

The antiprotons have been encased in a 1,000-kilogram (2,200 pounds) box called a “transportable antiproton trap.” It's compact enough to fit through ordinary laboratory doors and fit on a truck. It uses superconducting magnets cooled to -269 degrees Celsius (-452 Fahrenheit) that allows the antiprotons to be remain suspended in a vacuum — not touching the inner walls, which are made of ... matter.

The mass in Tuesday's test — slightly less than that of about 100 hydrogen atoms — is so little, experts say, that the worst possible outcome is the loss of the antiprotons. Even if they do touch matter, any release of energy would be unnoticeable, only an oscilloscope, which picks up electrical signals, would be able to detect it.

The trap, says CERN spokeswoman Sophie Tesauri, “is supposed to contain these antiprotons no matter what: if the truck stops, if it starts again, if it has to slam on the brakes — all that.” Work remains: The trap can contain the antiprotons on its own for only about four hours, and the drive to Düsseldorf is twice that.

The Geneva-based center is best known for its Large Hadron Collider, a network of magnets that accelerates particles through a 27-kilometer (17-mile) underground tunnel and slams them together at velocities approaching the speed of light. Scientists then study the results of those collisions.

But the sprawling, buzzing complex of scientific experiment is more than just about smashing atoms together: the World Wide Web, for example, was invented here by Britain’s Tim Berners-Lee in 1989.

Heinrich Heine University is seen as a better place to study antiprotons in-depth, because CERN — with all its other activities — generates a lot of magnetic interference that can skew the study of antimatter.

But to get them there, those antiprotons will have to avoid touching anything on the way.

The center's Antiproton Decelerator, where a proton beam gets fired into a block of metal, causes collisions that generate secondary particles, including lots of antiprotons. It’s billed as a unique machine that produces low-energy antiprotons for the study of antimatter.

CERN’s “Antimatter Factory,” lab officials say, is the only place in the world where scientists can store and study antiprotons.

The center has been experimenting with antimatter for years, and has made breakthroughs on measurement, storage and interaction of antimatter. Two years ago, the team transported a “cloud” of about 70 protons — not antiprotons — across CERN's campus.

It's a similar drill this time, except that with antiprotons, a much better vacuum chamber is needed, according to Christian Smorra, head of a team behind the apparatus designed to store and transport antimatter.

Jittery test teams weren't available for interviews before the exercise, but were expected to explain the results afterward on Tuesday.