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ATHENA Experiment
ATHENA, also known as the AD-1 experiment, was an antimatter research project at the Antiproton Decelerator at CERN, Geneva. In August 2002, it was the first experiment to produce 50,000 low-energy antihydrogen atoms, as reported in ''Nature (journal), Nature''. In 2005, ATHENA was disbanded and many of the former members of the research team worked on the subsequent Antiproton Decelerator#ALPHA, ALPHA experiment. Experimental setup The ATHENA apparatus comprised four main subsystems: the antiproton catching trap, the positron accumulator, the antiproton/positron mixing trap, and the antihydrogen annihilation detector. All traps in the experiment were variations of the Penning trap, which uses an axial magnetic field to transversely confine the charged particles, and a series of hollow cylindrical electrodes to trap them axially. The catching and mixing traps were adjacent to each other, and coaxial with a 3 Tesla (unit), T magnetic field from a Superconductivity, superconduc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antimatter
In modern physics, antimatter is defined as matter composed of the antiparticles (or "partners") of the corresponding particles in "ordinary" matter. Antimatter occurs in natural processes like cosmic ray collisions and some types of radioactive decay, but only a tiny fraction of these have successfully been bound together in experiments to form antiatoms. Minuscule numbers of antiparticles can be generated at particle accelerators; however, total artificial production has been only a few nanograms. No macroscopic amount of antimatter has ever been assembled due to the extreme cost and difficulty of production and handling. Theoretically, a particle and its antiparticle (for example, a proton and an antiproton) have the same mass, but opposite electric charge, and other differences in quantum numbers. A collision between any particle and its anti-particle partner leads to their mutual annihilation, giving rise to various proportions of intense photons (gamma rays), neutrin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
