Nuclear scientists safely transport world’s “most volatile substance” in historic first

The first-ever transport of one of the world’s most expensive, volatile, and rare substances took place this week at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN. Scientists have described the successful operation as a breakthrough that could unlock new possibilities for studying the elusive material known as antimatter.

The transfer of a small quantity of this material occurred on February 24 near Geneva, at the site of the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, according to the research center's press statement.

A truck carried the valuable cargo along a 10-kilometer route within CERN’s facilities, completing the journey in about 30 minutes and reaching a top speed of roughly 47 km/h. A specially designed container, weighing around 800 kilograms, securely held a payload of 92 antiprotons during the trip.

CERN is currently running several antimatter experiments, each producing different types of antiparticles. The Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment, or BASE—which focuses on antiprotons—was responsible for relocating the material.

Scientists generate antiprotons by accelerating regular protons to near light speed and smashing them into a block of iridium. This collision produces a range of secondary particles, including antiprotons, which are then carefully slowed using specialized instruments so they can be studied.

But the project now faces a problem: “The machines and equipment in CERN’s ‘antimatter factory’, where BASE is located, generate magnetic field fluctuations that limit how far we can push our precision measurements,” said Stefan Ulmer, a physicist at CERN involved in the BASE project.

“The facility in which we are operating is producing fluctuations. It’s a bit like looking through a microscope, and the object you’re looking at is kind of vibrating, so the picture gets blurry. Transporting particles out of this environment will enable us to obtain much sharper pictures.”

Typically, antiprotons are stored in large devices known as Penning traps, which can weigh several tons. To make transport possible, the BASE team developed a portable version small enough to fit inside a truck. This system includes a superconducting magnet cooled to minus 268 degrees Celsius, along with power supplies and monitoring equipment to maintain the antimatter’s stability.

The statement points out that CERN’s “antimatter factory” is the only place in the world where antiprotons can be produced, stored and studied. 

“Our aim with BASE-STEP is to be able to trap antiprotons and deliver them to our precision laboratories at a dedicated space at CERN, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf [HHU], Leibnitz University Hannover and perhaps other laboratories that are capable of performing very-high-precision antiproton measurements, which unfortunately is not possible in the antimatter factory,” explains Christian Smorra, the Leader of BASE-STEP. “We validated the feasibility of the project with protons last year, but what we achieved today with antiprotons is a huge leap forward towards our objective.”

Antimatter is essentially the mirror counterpart of ordinary matter, with opposite electric charge and reversed subatomic properties. When matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate each other, releasing a burst of energy.

Because of this, antimatter lies at the heart of one of the biggest mysteries in physics: the Big Bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter, which would have either completely annihilated each other or left a universe with equal quantities of both.

Instead, the observable universe is dominated by matter, with antimatter appearing only in tiny amounts generated by radioactive decay or cosmic ray interactions. This imbalance is known as matter-antimatter asymmetry. Current theories suggest that matter formed in a very slight excess—roughly one extra matter particle for every billion antimatter particles—but the reason for this remains unknown.

Studying antimatter may help scientists uncover the origin of this imbalance, though it remains extremely challenging. The very instruments used to produce antimatter also introduce interference that complicates precise measurements. Moving antimatter away from these noisy environments could therefore allow researchers to study it with far greater accuracy.

By Nazrin Sadigova