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The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) group trapped antihydrogen atoms for nearly 17 minutes which extended earlier results by nearly four orders of magnitude. This breakthrough may open a new window for people to understand the Big Bang and to rethink the nature.

"We've trapped antihydrogen atoms for as long as 1,000 seconds, which is forever in the world of high-energy particle physics," said Joel Fajans,  a member of the ALPHA (Antihydrogen Laser PHysics Apparatus) experiment at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. "We'd prefer being able to trap a thousand atoms for a thousand seconds, but we can still initiate laser and microwave experiments to explore the properties of antiatoms."

Current theories thought normal matter and antimatter should have been produced in equal amounts during the Big Bang that created the universe 13.6 billion years ago. But there is no evidence of antimatter galaxies or clouds, and antimatter is seen rarely and for only short periods. Therefore, antimatter is still a puzzle.

So scientists want to measure the properties of antiatoms in order to determine whether their electromagnetic and gravitational interactions are identical to those of normal matter. One of their goals is to check whether antiatoms abide by CPT (charge-parity-time) symmetry as do normal atoms. CPT symmetry means that a particle would behave the same way in a mirror universe if it had the opposite charge and moved backward in time.

"Any hint of CPT symmetry breaking would require a serious rethink of our understanding of nature," said Jeffrey Hangst of Aarhus University in Denmark, spokesperson for the ALPHA experiment. "But half of the universe has gone missing, so some kind of rethink is apparently on the agenda."

According to a UC Berkeley release, ALPHA captures antihydrogen by mixing antiprotons from CERN's Antiproton Decelerator with positrons, or antielectrons in a vacuum chamber, where they combine into antihydrogen atoms. The cold neutral antihydrogen is confined within a magnetic bottle, taking advantage of the tiny magnetic moments of the antiatoms. Trapped antiatoms are detected by turning off the magnetic field and allowing the particles to annihiliate with normal matter, which creates a flash of light.

In September 2002, ATHENA announced the first controlled production of a large number of antihydrogen atoms at low energies and the direct observation of their annihilation. A month later ATRAP announced the first glimpse inside the antiatom.

Ordinary atoms consist of a number of electrons in orbit around an atomic nucleus. The hydrogen atom is the simplest atom of all. Its nucleus consists of a proton, around which a single electron circulates. The recipe for anti-hydrogen is very simple: take one antiproton, bring up one anti-electron, and put the latter into orbit around the former. But it is very difficult to carry out as antiparticles do not naturally exist on earth. They can only be created in the laboratory.

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