🚚 CERN researchers transport antimatter by truck for the first time

• CERN has developed a portable container that can transport antimatter by truck between laboratories.
• The test showed that protons could be transported 4 kilometers without a single particle disappearing during transport.
• The new technology could enable experiments with 100 times higher precision than what is possible today.

Custom-built container solves measurement problems

CERN has created a two-meter-long portable container for transporting antimatter. The problem researchers wanted to solve was that the hardware used to capture antimatter also creates interference that limits the precision of measurements.

Antimatter is produced when a particle beam collides with a stationary target. All antiparticles that emerge from the collision carry a lot of energy. To hold onto them, researchers must slow them down using electromagnetic fields. But this hardware is sensitive to external magnetic interference.

The solution is to move the antimatter away from where it is produced. But this is complicated because the container must be maintained in an extreme vacuum and requires superconducting materials to create the electromagnetic fields that prevent the antimatter from hitting the container walls.

Technical requirements for transport

The portable container has a connection at one end that can be plugged into the particle beam from the existing facility. The connection leads to a containment area surrounded by a superconducting magnet. The device also contains batteries to ensure continuous power supply and electronics to run everything.

The entire setup is enclosed in a metal frame with lifting points that can be used to attach it to a crane for transport. The system needs liquid helium to keep the superconductors working.

First test with protons

To confirm the system works, the team loaded it with protons, which are easier to produce than antimatter. Two internal cranes at the facility, along with a heavy-duty four-wheeled cart, moved the container to a loading dock where it was transferred to a truck.

The transport went around the CERN campus in Meyrin. The protons started in France but briefly crossed the border into Switzerland. In total, they traveled just under 4 kilometers and reached speeds of over 40 kilometers per hour.

System maintained temperature during transport

The hardware stayed cold during transport, generally at just over 5 Kelvin. The exception was when the system was reconnected to the antimatter source and the electrical system at CERN. Although these actions showed up as temperature spikes, the superconducting magnets remained below 7 Kelvin.

An accelerometer recorded the forces the hardware experienced while the truck was moving. This showed that changes in the truck's speed produced turbulence in the liquid helium. Levels had dropped from about 75 percent of maximum to 30 percent when the system was reconnected, indicating that liquid helium is the key limiting factor for transport.

No loss during transport

Measurements made while the system was in transit suggest the entire process occurred without losses. Not a single proton disappeared during the entire transport.

What is missing now is another experiment at CERN that the antimatter can be delivered to. The team is presumably looking for laboratory space in a building with little electromagnetic interference. But the team has bigger goals. There is a facility being built in Düsseldorf, Germany, for antiproton experiments, nearly 800 kilometers and eight hours away by road.

If the delivery can be made successfully, the new facility in Germany should enable measurements with over 100 times better precision than what has been achieved at CERN.

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