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Friday, December 10, 2010

Scientists say on way to solving anti-matter mystery | Reuters

Scientists say on way to solving anti-matter mystery | Reuters: "(Reuters) - European scientists reported on Monday the creation and capture of anti-hydrogen atoms in a novel magnetic trap and said it put them on track to solving one of the great cosmic mysteries -- the make-up of anti-matter.

Anti-matter is of intense interest outside the global scientific community because it has often been cited as a potential source of boundless and almost cost-free energy.

The announcement from CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, came just three weeks after another of the three teams working separately on the problem at the particle research center near Geneva said they had briefly made and caught the elusive atoms for the first time.

'With these alternative methods of producing and eventually studying anti-hydrogen, anti-matter will not be able to hide its properties from us for much longer,' said Yasunori Yamazaki of the team that scored the latest breakthrough.

Anti, or neutral, matter is believed to have been created in the same quantities as conventional matter -- the substance of everything visible in the universe including life on earth -- at the moment of the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago."

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