Scientists trapped antimatter particle for months — but studying it without blowing up lab was a challenge

NY Post ^ | 10/25/2026 | Brandon Cruz

[DFG]

This will blow your mind.

A team of physicists recently trapped a single antimatter particle for months — a delicate feat where one wrong move could’ve blown up their lab, according to new research.

Antimatter, which explodes when it comes into contact with the ordinary matter, was captured by researchers at Northwestern University and stored in a cold box where they used incredibly cold temps and magnets to suspend the particle in midair, according to findings published in the Physical Review Letters.

“We actually coaxed this very fast positron to sit there and behave for months at a time,” lead researcher Gerald Gabrielse told the tech and science outlet Interesting Engineering.

To keep it from touching anything, the team built a contraption called a “one-positron quantum cyclotron,” which uses near zero temperatures and invisible magnetic and electric forces to keep the particle floating in a vacuum, keeping it from ever touching a single wall.

The first-of-its-kind experiment put the particle into its lowest possible energy state, letting scientists control it with pinpoint precision for months without destroying it in order to study whether antimatter behaves differently than regular matter it mirrors.

The fearless physicists at Northwestern University, under the guidance of Gabrielse, first snagged the particle as it shot out of radioactive material, then froze it to just 0.3 degrees above absolute zero — negative 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit.

The hardest part, Gabrielse said, was getting the speedy particle to slow down enough to catch it.

The breakthrough could help solve one of the universe’s biggest mysteries of why nearly everything is made of regular matter, when the Big Bang should have created equal amounts of both. The antimatter

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TOPICS: Science
KEYWORDS: antimatter; astronomy; gabrielse; physics; science; stringtheory

[William Tell]

"how did they recognize what they had, are they retaining it, and how can they set it free?"

1) Electrons and positrons have very little mass and the curvature of their path in a magnetic field is a measure of their charge to mass ratio; for a given magnetic field, the curvature of a proton versus a positron would be quite different.

2) The curvature of the path of a positron would cause it to go in a circle if the space was large enough.

3) Turn off the magnet and the positron will fly off in a straight path.

[smokingfrog]

Simple .. as long as you can build a combustion chamber strong enough to contain the blast.

[smokingfrog]

lol

[Hebrews 11:6]

Thanks for your answers.

Turn off the magnet and the positron will fly off in a straight path.

Whence, presumably, it will encounter matter and explode. If they're concerned about an explosion in their lab, it seems like they'd want to set it free outside in a wide-open space and run away. Yet, that machine doesn't appear very portable.

[minnesota_bound]

Scotty saved the day by using more power...

[NorthMountain]

which uses near zero temperatures

that would be zero Kelvin, at which temperature oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen have solidified and even helium has been reduced to a strangely-behaving liquid.

So the antiproton wasn't suspended in "mid-air" ... it was suspended in a vacuum.

[Ronaldus Magnus]

Cute story, but their math is a bit off, if it’s one positron.

This is the dumbest headline of the week.