[Science] Antimatter! Hurray!

A closeup of the Magnetic Jar used in the CERN experiment
N. MADSEN, ALPHA/SWANSEA via Nature

In the top story for today from Popular Science Magazine, CERN physicists have announced that they've trapped antimatter, specifically anti-hydrogen, for a whopping 17 minutes; a feat that they previously were only able to accomplish for a few hundred milliseconds.

This is a great leap forward for the study of antimatter, which could potentially be the greatest producer of energy in the universe due to its ability to create energy from matter at a 100% conversion rate, a rate about 100 times stronger than a normal hydrogen bomb.

Anti-hydrogen, when coming into contact with hydrogen, completely annihilates the former, producing a huge amount of energy in the process. This exact interaction is what makes antimatter so difficult to store or produce, as any contact with the gases naturally present in the air would cause the antimatter to destroy both itself and the gases it came into contact with. Scientists got around this problem by, obviously, trapping the antimatter in a vacuum, as well as a magnetic field.

Scientists still don't know much about antimatter, they don't even know how gravity affects it. Which makes the success of this experiment all the more valuable and exciting. We're still lightyears away from producing large quantities of antimatter to power engines or the like, but this is a giant step in the right direction! BE EXCITED. I AM.