INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Studying antimatter, therefore, has been extremely difficult
that limits the precision with which measurements can be made
So CERN decided that it might be good to determine how to move the antimatter away from where it's produced
Since it was tackling that problem anyway, CERN decided to make a shipping container for antimatter, allowing it to be put on a truck and
potentially taken to labs throughout Europe.The problem facing CERN comes from its own hardware
The antimatter it captures is produced by smashing a particle beam into a stationary target
As a result, all the anti-particles that come out of the debris carry a lot of energy
If you want to hold on to any of them, you have to slow them down, which is done using electromagnetic fields that can act on the charged
Unfortunately, as the team behind the new work notes, many of the measurements we'd like to do with the antimatter are "extremely sensitive
to external magnetic field noise."In short, the hardware that slows the antimatter down limits the precision of the measurements you can
take.The obvious solution is to move the antimatter away from where it's produced
But that gets tricky very fast
The antimatter containment device has to be maintained as an extreme vacuum and needs superconducting materials to produce the
electromagnetic fields that keep the antimatter from bumping into the walls of the container
All of that means a significant power supply, along with a cache of liquid helium to keep the superconductors working
A standard shipping container just won't do.So the team at CERN built a two-meter-long portable containment device
On one end is a junction that allows it to be plugged into the beam of particles produced by the existing facility
That junction leads to the containment area, which is blanketed by a superconducting magnet
Elsewhere on the device are batteries to ensure an uninterrupted power supply, along with the electronics to run it all
The whole setup is encased in a metal frame that includes lifting points that can be used to attach it to a crane for moving around.
