Auntie Hydrogen

Scientists at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, took some more time off from creating the black hole that will destroy the world to talk about how they were recently able to analyze an atom of "anti-hydrogen."

All of the particles that make up atoms have an oppositely charged particle that is identical to them in every way except for that electrical charge. One of those particles, for example, is an electron. Regular hydrogen, the simplest atom that exists, consists of one electron orbiting one proton. The "anti-hydrogen" atom is made up of one antielectron, which is usually called a "positron," orbiting an antiproton. The positron is identical to the electron in every way except for its electrical charge, which is positive instead of negative. Since there is no moral value judgment connected to electrical charge, there is no way to determine which particle is the evil twin, and thus neither of the particles wears a goatee. The antiproton is identical to the proton in every way except that it has a negative electrical charge instead of the proton's positive one.

The problem with studying antiparticles and the anti-atoms that they would make up is that they do not get along with regular particles and regular atoms. When they meet, they completely annihilate each other and release large amounts of energy. The high energy levels are one reason that science fiction stories often power their spaceships with "antimatter," because small amounts of it would release the great energies needed to power ships to other stars.

So when you've made yourself an anti-hydrogen atom, it has to be kept someplace where it can't touch anything made up of regular matter. Since everything we use, see, touch or deal with is made up of regular matter, that makes things kind of tough. Scientists use magnetic fields to safeguard and store the anti-particles when they're created, so they can be studied.

The CERN scientists finished a "spectroscopic analysis" of the anti-hydrogen atom using those magnetic fields and by measuring the results when the magnets were turned off and the anti-hydrogen atoms annihilated against regular matter. If this sounds like trying to figure out what kind of bug left a certain pattern on your car windshield, you have an idea, but apparently this is much more difficult.

Scientists believe that the spectroscopic analysis should show that anti-hydrogen is exactly the same as hydrogen except for the electrical charges of the particles, just like the anti-particles are the same as the regular particles except for the reverse charges. If the two are the same otherwise, it will help scientists better understand how things got made.

If the two are not the same, then more study will be needed to learn which atom is wearing the goatee so that we can see if the anti-matter universe is evil...or we are.