Antimaterie auf Rädern – Die Autorin Chetna Krishna verfolgt den „coolsten“ Transport des CERN, einen Test eines Systems zum Transport gespeicherter Antimaterie über den Kontinent.

From the article

>If scientists demonstrate they can transport these protons without a disturbance today, it will set the stage for transporting antiprotons, aimed to be done in 2025. The long-term goal of the scientists on the Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment, or BASE, is to establish a service to deliver antiprotons from CERN to various precision laboratories across Europe, empowering them to conduct their own antimatter research. The accelerator equipment present in CERN’s Antimatter Factory generates magnetic field fluctuations that limit how far scientists can push precision measurements of antimatter. Delivering antimatter particles to precision labs would enable the BASE team to explore the fundamental symmetries of nature in much quieter conditions and take new measurements, improved by orders of magnitude, of the fundamental properties of antiprotons.

>To keep the protons apart—both from one another and from the walls of their container—scientists levitate them using a superconducting magnet in an electrostatic trapping potential.

>“I feel quite confident,” says Stefan Ulmer, BASE spokesperson. “If the proton test works, we just need to switch the polarity of the trap. The difficulty is in transporting a loaded superconducting magnet, it’s not in the particles which are inside.”