Scientists Trap Antimatter for Almost 17 Minutes It sounds like
something out of Star Trek but scientists have been able to trap
antimatter for 17 minutes, improving on an experiment last Fall
that was able to trap antimatter for merely fractions of
seconds. So just how difficult is it to trap antimatter for
study? Just like in Star Trek, the combination of matter and
antimatter particles leads to the annihilation of both and the
production of a small flash of energy. Thus, to successfully
trap antimatter, researchers use magnetic fields to contain
antiatoms. When they turn off the field, the resulting
annihilation events–recorded by a special detector–clue the
scientists into just how many antiatoms are left after a set
period of containment time.