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Antimatter is simply the opposite of regular matter and will destroy itself and any regular matter it contacts in a flash of raw energy, emitting radiation. Now somehow, scientists have been able to store the antimatter without it annihilating regular matter and itself.

So how exactly is antimatter stored without it being destroyed in the process? Since you probably need a vacuum for this, did they somehow make an artificial vacuum or just send it to space?

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  • $\begingroup$ dark matter and anti matter are different things. So I changed the title of your post $\endgroup$
    – SchrodingersCat
    Commented Sep 19, 2015 at 13:25
  • $\begingroup$ What do you mean by "send in space" $\endgroup$
    – manthano
    Commented Sep 19, 2015 at 13:32
  • $\begingroup$ @manthano As I understood, he thinks on the nearly vacuum of the space can serve as a natural storage, with extraordinary security risks in case of antimatter constructed in dangerous size (which is far more as the current results). $\endgroup$
    – peterh
    Commented Sep 19, 2015 at 13:42
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    $\begingroup$ Related: physics.stackexchange.com/q/192640/2451 $\endgroup$
    – Qmechanic ♦
    Commented Sep 19, 2015 at 15:28
  • $\begingroup$ Magnetic Bottle? That's what sci-fi novel Chasm City, tells me. $\endgroup$
    – Mark Rogers
    Commented Sep 19, 2015 at 15:58

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Charged antimatter particles are stored using electric and magnetic fields in near vacuum conditions. (Near-vacuum conditions can be created on Earth)

Anti-hydrogen is stored by exploiting its magnetic properties. (While neutral, it still has spin magnetic moment. The storage is done using strong superconducting magnets.)

Antiparticles are easier to store when they are low energy. One of the biggest problems with storing antimatter is the high energy and velocity they are generally created at. It helps to slow them down. (for instance, Anti-protons are made to pass through a dense electron gas, which slows them down.)

The maximum amount of time anti-hydrogen has been stored on Earth is 16 minutes. (June 2011, ALPHA at CERN.)

The creation of anti-hydrogen is easy because it only involves the combination of an anti-proton and positron. It is much more technical and difficult to create higher/heavier atoms, even anti-helium.

See this link for more information: http://home.web.cern.ch/about/engineering/storing-antimatter

Paper on observation of antihelium-4 nuclei. (The difficulties become obvious): http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.3312

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  • $\begingroup$ Another way to store antimatter if it lasted long enough or if you could make a cage out of streams of it would be by using true tauonium. $\endgroup$
    – Jitter
    Commented Sep 19, 2015 at 14:31
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    $\begingroup$ "F-ing magnets: how do they work?" :-) . In theatre, when in doubt the answer is "Shakespeare"; in physics when in doubt the answer is "magnets." $\endgroup$
    – Carl Witthoft
    Commented Sep 19, 2015 at 19:26

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