Scientists at CERN have built a shipping container capable of transporting antimatter out of the laboratory for the first time.
A team from the European research hub built a two-metre-long containment device and successfully drove the antimatter 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) before returning it to the lab.
The first-of-its-kind demonstration paves the way for antimatter to be transported to laboratories throughout Europe via public road networks.
A state-of-the-art facility at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf in Germany – nearly 800km away – is expected to be the first recipient of antimatter from CERN.
The study of antimatter is essential for understanding space and how the universe works, however there are less than half a dozen facilities on Earth capable of creating it.
Its production requires smashing particles travelling close to the speed of light into a stationary target, with magnets used to trap it in a container. These magnetic traps require a lot of electricity, as well as a special environment to prevent the antimatter from disappearing by touching any regular matter – even dust.
To overcome this, a team from the European research hub built a two-metre-long containment device that was able to move antimatter on the back of a trailer around the CERN site at speeds of more than 40km/h
The achievement was detailed in a paper, titled ‘Proton transport from the antimatter factory of CERN’, which was published in the scientific journal Nature.
“We transferred the trapped protons from our experimental area at the AMF (antimatter factory) onto a truck and transported them across the Meyrin site of CERN, demonstrating autonomous operation without external power for four hours and loss-free proton relocation,” the paper stated.
“We thereby confirm the feasibility of transferring particles into low-noise laboratories in the vicinity of the AMF and of using a power generator on the truck to reach laboratories throughout Europe.”
A map of the route that the truck took while carrying the antimatter around the CERN campus shows that it crossed from France into Switzerland and back again.
The scientists added that the transportation feat marked the start of a “new era in precision antimatter research”.
