Scientists have successfully stored anti-matter - the mysterious substance used as a weapon of mass destruction in the novels of Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown.
Researchers at CERN, home of the Large Hadron Collider, had bottled antimatter back in 2010, keeping hold of the atoms for a fraction of a second.
But CERN have now managed to store antimatter, made from hydrogen, for a record 16 minutes - 5,000 times longer than their previous attempt.
Research: This CERN graph shows untrapped antihydrogen atoms annihilating on the inner surface
The research, published in journal Nature Physics, tells how the ALPHA experiment at CERN created a 'magnetic bottle' - a superconducting magnet - which suspended the antiatoms away from the walls, to store the antihydrogen.
Scientists have kept minute amounts of antimatter in the lab for nearly ten years but they have struggled to keep it for any length of time because antimatter is immediately destroyed when stored conventionally.
More Here: “Angels Nix Demons” - http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/06/-angels-demons-cern-physicists-in-antimatter-breakthrough.html
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