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Enlarge Image Antimatter reservoir. A newly discovered belt of antiprotons lies within the innermost portion (pink) of Earth's magnetosphere, the large bubblelike region interior to the blue arc that is controlled by the planet's magnetic field. Credit: Aaron Kaase/NASA/Goddard A newly discovered belt of antimatter circling Earth could be an astronaut's best friend. The belt, which consists of antiprotons trapped by Earth's magnetic field several hundred kilometers above the planet's surface, may ultimately become a key source of fuel for missions venturing beyond the solar system. Researchers analyzing data from the PAMELA (Payload for Antimatter/Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics)...

BERKELEY – Owen Chamberlain, who shared the Nobel Prize in physics as co-discoverer of the antiproton, has died at age 85. Chamberlain, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, died Tuesday at his Berkeley home from complications of Parkinson's disease, campus officials said Wednesday. Chamberlain and Berkeley physicist Emilio Segre shared the Nobel Prize in 1959 for discovering the antiproton, which is the opposite counterpart to the positively charged proton. “The discovery opened up a whole new field of physics and expanded our understanding of particle physics,” Chamberlain's colleague and former student Herbert Steiner, a professor...