Overview
- CERN’s BASE-STEP team transported 92 antiprotons around its Geneva campus on Tuesday and confirmed the particles were recovered intact.
- The antiprotons rode in a portable Penning trap cooled to about 8.2 kelvin, where superconducting magnets and ultra-high vacuum kept them from touching matter during the drive.
- Researchers plan to deliver antiprotons to Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf for cleaner measurements that they say could improve precision by roughly 100 to 1,000 times.
- Engineers must extend the trap’s current four-hour autonomous hold time and prove safe transfer into destination experiments before any multi-hour road trip.
- The quantity moved was tiny and posed no public hazard, and the demo follows a 2024 proton transport test from CERN’s Antiproton Decelerator, the world’s source for usable antiprotons.