Everybody likes a road trip, and science nerds are no exception. They’ve even figured out how to take a little antimatter along for the ride. CERN has announced that for the first time ever, it has managed to not only move antimatter out of the lab, but load it on a truck and take it for a drive.
These scientists aren’t planning to take their antimatter to beach on their days off. CERN’s location on the border of France and Switzerland is the only place in the world that can create tiny amounts of antimatter for research purposes. The instant it comes into contact with matter, the particles annihilate each other, making it extremely difficult to keep around. The BASE project (Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment) has successfully stored antimatter particles for periods longer than a year, so this is no longer an issue.
However, the equipment used to create antimatter generates tiny magnetic fields that are preventing scientists from making more precise measurements. CERN says:
“The machines and equipment in CERN’s ‘antimatter factory’, where BASE is located, generate magnetic field fluctuations that limit how far we can push our precision measurements,” explains Stefan Ulmer, Spokesperson of BASE. These fluctuations are minuscule, of the order of one billionth of a tesla, 20 000 times smaller than the magnetic field of the earth, and undetectable outside the building. “However, the precision of the measurements taken in BASE is such that gaining an even deeper understanding of the fundamental properties of antiprotons will require moving the experiment out of the building.”, says Stefan Ulmer.
The next step
To do this, scientists built BASE-STEP, a more portable version of the equipment necessary to keep antimatter particles stored safely. Originally envisioned as something small enough to toss in the back seat, it weighs about a ton and requires a truck to transport it. More than half that weight comes from persistent superconducting magnets, similar to what maglev trains use, that suspend antimatter particles inside a vacuum chamber, preventing them from contacting any matter. Liquid helium cools this chamber to -445 degrees Fahrenheit, just a few degrees above absolute zero. BASE-STEP is designed to absorb up to 1 G of acceleration in any direction, enabling it to smooth out bumps in the road as well as the normal forces of driving.
On Tuesday, March 24, scientists loaded BASE-STEP and the 92 antiprotons stored inside onto a truck, then drove around the CERN campus for about 90 minutes while monitoring the state of its cargo. The test was successful, as all of the antimatter survived the drive. This is an important step toward enabling other research facilities around Europe to participate in antimatter research. The goal is to transport antimatter to a research laboratory about eight hours away in Germany. BASE-STEP used onboard power for this test, but will need a generator to keep running for a drive that long.
Is it safe?
Considering that matter and antimatter annihilate each other in a powerful release of energy when they collide, it’s natural to wonder just how safe it is to transport on public roads. It seems that on every few episodes of “Star Trek” there’s a warp core breach that allows exactly this to happen, threatening to blow up a starship in the process. One pound of antimatter could cause an explosion equivalent to 19 megatons of TNT, so it’s easy to imagine how dangerous this might be.
Fortunately, truth is safer than science fiction. There are about 454 grams in a pound. Avogadro’s number tells us that there are 6.02214076 × 1023 subatomic particles in one gram of a substance. BASE-STEP transported 92 particles. Only CERN’s precise monitoring equipment would be able to detect their annihilation. To put it another way, CERN says:
If the transportation trial fails, and the antiparticles annihilate, the energy released will be the equivalent of 10 microelectrons of energy (this is the mass of a thousand electrons). By way of comparison, the amount of sunlight that shines onto our skin every second is 1 billion times larger than the amount of energy released by the annihilation of all the antiprotons in the BASE-STEP trap. This transportation is not any more dangerous than any lorry transportation on public roads.
In the future, larger quantities may bring some risks, but so does nuclear waste that we’re still dealing with 80 years after it was made, and will be for tens of thousands of years. At least antimatter isn’t radioactive.