Physicists just took a road trip with a load of antimatter. Here\u2019s how it went<\/p>\n
Scientists at CERN built a container weighing about a ton to transport just 92 subatomic antimatter particles without annihilating them<\/p>\n
By Emma Gometz<\/a> edited by Claire Cameron<\/a><\/p>\n A truck that was used to carry antimatter around the CERN campus.<\/p>\n Physicists just pulled off perhaps the coolest road stunt a scientist can do: they loaded a truck up with antimatter and went for a drive. The feat marks the first time scientists have ever managed to transport antimatter out of the lab\u2014and could help usher in a new era of antimatter discoveries.<\/p>\n To understand the achievement, it\u2019s important to fully appreciate why antimatter is so hard to handle. Antimatter is like the mirror image of matter. Unlike regular matter, which is made up of particles, antimatter is made up of antiparticles, which are similar in mass to typical particles but have opposing electrical charges and magnetic properties. Antimatter is produced naturally in some nuclear or cosmic ray interactions, and it can also be generated in specialized facilities such as the Antimatter Factory at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics near Geneva. But if regular matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate each other instantly in a burst of energy. This quality, perhaps unsurprisingly, makes antimatter both incredibly rare and notoriously difficult to study.<\/p>\n But scientists at CERN were undeterred. On Tuesday the physicists loaded 92 antiprotons\u2014the antimatter version of protons\u2014into a truck and drove them around for about an hour and a half.<\/p>\n On supporting science journalism<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing<\/a>. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n This is the reason why: CERN\u2019s scientists have been able to successfully create<\/a> and store antimatter, but the facility\u2019s particle accelerators create \u201cmagnetic noise\u201d that disturbs any measurements of the antimatter, says physicist Christian Smorra, project manager of the antiproton transportation project. So to really investigate the antimatter they create, the researchers need to trap it and move it to other labs. But first they had to work out how.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to build something that fits in the back of your car in the beginning,\u201d Smorra explains. \u201cBut then, when you start looking at the details, what you need to build this trap, then it becomes bigger and bigger.\u201d The final trap they designed\u2014essentially a massive box\u2014ended up weighing about a metric ton and had to be lifted with a crane.<\/p>\n That said, \u201cwe managed to build something slim enough to fit through a door,\u201d Smorra adds.<\/p>\n A portable cryogenic Penning trap used to transport antimatter.<\/p>\n The antiproton trap contains a magnetic field that spins the antiparticles in a circle, suspending them in space. Then the antiparticles are cryogenically cooled to keep them at low energy. The trap also maintains an ultrahigh vacuum so that there\u2019s no chance that any regular particles will collide with the antiparticles.<\/p>\n During Tuesday\u2019s test, CERN scientists and other researchers from Heinrich Heine University D\u00fcsseldorf in Germany, loaded the antiproton trap into a small truck and drove it around the CERN campus. The team monitored the antiprotons throughout the journey and found them all to be safe and sound when they were returned to the lab. Eventually, the researchers hope, antiprotons will one day be transported on the eight-hour drive from CERN to Heinrich Heine University D\u00fcsseldorf for further study.<\/p>\n Studying antimatter particles could help physicists answer a long-standing mystery of the field: If antimatter and matter are both created and destroyed together, why isn\u2019t there as much antimatter<\/a> as there is matter in the universe?<\/p>\n In the meantime, for Smorra, Tuesday\u2019s test was the ride of a lifetime.<\/p>\n \u201cI think [the] truck drive was maybe the most exciting drive I\u2019ve had,\u201d Smorra says.<\/p>\n It\u2019s Time to Stand Up for Science<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/a>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts<\/a>, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters<\/a>, must-watch videos, challenging games<\/a>, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. 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I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 25, 2026 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Physicists just took a road trip with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[85,46,370,141],"class_list":["post-360147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-physics","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/webimage-Antimatter-CERN-1.png\")
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