Only Perception: 科學大突破！抓住反物質千秒

2011-06-08

科學大突破！抓住反物質千秒

◆ 科學大突破！抓住反物質千秒
http://udn.com/NEWS/WORLD/WOR4/6382745.shtml

【聯合報╱編譯組／綜合報導】2011.06.07

科學家表示，他們成功困住並貯存反氫原子，時間長達破紀錄的16分鐘。這項驚人的科技突破有助於科學家深入了解反物質的奧秘。

研究人員在實驗室中創造超導磁場「磁瓶」，用於鎖住反氫原子。日內瓦歐洲核子研究組織（CERN）ALPHA研究團隊發言人韓斯特表示：「我們可以困住反氫原子1000秒，時間長到足以展開研究，即使目前能夠捕捉的數量不多。」研究刊登於《自然物理學》期刊。

科學家認為，將近140億年前大霹靂讓宇宙誕生時，產生等量的物質與反物質，後來彼此相互碰撞，釋出能量並相互消滅。問題是既然一開始兩者數量相同，為何在相互碰撞中只有物質留下來，反物質幾乎全部消失？這種不對稱狀態是粒子物理學最大謎團之一。利用氫原子進行低能量實驗，可能是邁向解答的關鍵步驟。

反物質和物質碰撞會產生大量能量，在知名作家丹布朗的小說《天使與魔鬼》中，一個秘密激進組織就是將偷來的反物質放在磁瓶中，充當毀滅性武器。

同一研究團隊去年困住數十個反物質原子，時間僅數分之一秒，為全球首度成功案例。

※ 相關報導：

＊ CERN scientists confine antihydrogen atoms for 1000 seconds
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-05-cern-scientists-confine-antihydrogen-atoms.html

Seventeen minutes may not seem like much, but to physicists working on the Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus (ALPHA) project at the CERN physics complex near Geneva, 1000 seconds is nearly four orders of magnitude better than has ever been achieved before in capturing and holding onto antimatter atoms. In a paper published in arXiv, a team of researchers studying the properties of antimatter, describe a process whereby they were able to confine antihydrogen atoms for just that long, paving the way for new experiments that could demonstrate properties of antimatter that until now, have been largely speculation.

＊ Confinement of antihydrogen for 1,000 seconds
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nphys2025
http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.4982

The ALPHA Collaboration
Nature Physics (2011)
doi: 10.1038/nphys2025

...A critical question for future studies is: how long can anti-atoms be trapped? Here, we report the observation of anti-atom confinement for 1,000 s, extending our earlier results by nearly four orders of magnitude. Our calculations indicate that most of the trapped anti-atoms reach the ground state. Further, we report the first measurement of the energy distribution of trapped antihydrogen, which, coupled with detailed comparisons with simulations, provides a key tool for the systematic investigation of trapping dynamics.