Scientists Trapped and Stored Antihydrogen Atoms for a Record 16 Minutes

Scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva on 5 June 2011 claimed that they had trapped and stored antihydrogen atoms for a record 16 minutes. This discovery can provide deeper insights into the mysteries of antimatter. Particle and anti-particles destroy each other in a small flash of energy after they collide.

When the big-bang event happened almost 14 billion years ago, matter and antimatter are considered to have existed in equal quantities. If that balance had persisted, the Universe we live in would never have come into being. Nature has a slight preference for matter over antimatter. This fact remains one of the unsolved mysteries for the particle physics. The low-energy experiments with hydrogen atoms could solve this mystery.