Scientists claim breakthrough in antimatter hunt

GENEVA – Scientists claimed a breakthrough Thursday toward solving one of the biggest riddles of physics, trapping an "anti-atom" for the first time in a quest to understand what happened to all the antimatter that has vanished since the Big Bang. An international team of physicists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, managed to keep atoms of anti-hydrogen from disappearing long enough to demonstrate that they can be studied in the lab. 

Theory posits that matter and its opposite, antimatter — both are defined as having mass and taking up space — were created in equal amounts at the moment of the Big Bang, which spawned the universe some 13.7 billion years ago. While matter went on to become the building block of everything that exists, antimatter has all but disappeared except in the lab. 

"This field is 20 years old and has been making incremental progress toward exactly this all along the way," he added. "We really think that this was the most difficult step." Since their first success, the team has managed to hold the anti-atoms even longer. AP