How can scientists store anti matter if it dissappear whenever it touches other atoms?
In: Physics
They use magnetic and/or electric fields to contain them. This way, they don’t touch matter (at least for a while).
Well keep in mind here that antimatter is ridiculously energy-intensive to create, at least with current technology, so there’s no feasible way to make kilos and kilos of it. A recent experiment at CERN managed to create [groups of about 100 anti-hydrogen atoms.](https://home.cern/news/press-release/physics/alpha-experiment-cern-observes-influence-gravity-antimatter) 100 atoms is like, nothing, practically. It’s an incredibly small amount of hydrogen and yet it is extremely impressive that they are doing this because it involves creating anti-protons and positrons separately and then combining them. So that’s the scale we’re working with
But that being said the experiment used a “magnetic trap” to keep the anti-hydrogen atoms in place. The atoms have a slight magnetic charge so you can use a powerful magnetic field to hold them suspended in space so they don’t hit any matter and annihilate. And then, in this experiment, they just let them out. They just let go of them and let them annihilate because again, this is an incredibly small amount of antimatter
when it comes to anti-protons and anti-electrons, you can store them in a “storage ring” which is basically a vacuum tube under a magnetic field. keeping the particles spinning on a path in a vacuum, helps keep them away from the matter where they would annihilate. these fast, electrically charged particles are often used for particle accelerators where they are intentionally brought to collision .
you can also cool them down and bring them together to form actual anti-atoms. since they are electrically neutral, its harder to store them and move them around. they basically move with diffusion, so they get lost after some amount of time (minutes to hours). it is however enough time to do some experiment with those atoms like spectroscopy or even measure [gravity.](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06527-1)
Just like you said – by preventing it from touching other atoms! At a simple level: You create the antimatter in a vacuum chamber that is (nearly) empty of atoms, and then use electric and magnetic fields to keep the antimatter in place and not touching anything.
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