First Antimatter Chemistry
The Athena collaboration, an experimental group working at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, has measured chemical reactions involving antiprotonic hydrogen, a bound object consisting of a negatively charged antiproton paired with a positively charged proton.
This composite object, which can also be called protonium, eventually annihilates itself, creating an even number of telltale charged pions. Normally the annihilation comes about in a trillionth of a second, but in the Athena apparatus (and its very thorough vacuum conditions) the duration is a whopping millionth of a second.
The protonium comes about in the following way. First, antiprotons are created in CERN's proton synchrotron by smashing protons into a thin target. The resultant antiprotons then undergo the deceleration, from 97 percent down to 10 percent the speed of light. Several more stages of cooling, including immersion in a bath of slow electrons, brings the antiprotons to a point where they can be caught in Athena's electrostatic trap. This allows the researchers to study then, for the first time, a chemical reaction between the simplest antimatter ion -- the antiproton -- and the simplest matter molecular ion, namely H<sub> 2</sub> <sup> +</sup> (two hydrogen atoms with one electron missing). Joining these two ions results in the protonium plus a neutral hydrogen atom (see figure at Physics News Graphics).
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