Please drive carefully: scientists plan to transport volatile antimatter for first time

"A core question we want to understand is where did matter come from. And then, if you know about antimatter, it's natural to ask, why is that not here? The process is not understood and we are hunting for clues as to why it happened, says Dr Christian Smorra, a physicist on the Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment (Base) at Cern."

"The 20-minute test run around the campus, pencilled in for later this month, will mark the world's first attempt to transport antimatter, a substance so delicate that when it meets normal matter, both are consumed in a burst of pure energy. To reach this moment has taken years. But if the test goes well meaning the truck returns with the antimatter intact it will pave the way for Cern to transport the material to other laboratories."

"The device on Cern's truck will carry about 1,000 antimatter particles, weighing about a billionth of a trillionth of a gram. Should the containment fail, and the antimatter make contact with normal matter, the resulting pulse of energy would be released."

CERN is conducting the world's first transport of antimatter, a substance that annihilates when meeting normal matter. A one-tonne device containing approximately 1,000 antimatter particles will be transported around the Geneva campus in a 20-minute test. Success will enable CERN to move antimatter to other laboratories for precision measurements. Scientists seek to understand the matter-antimatter asymmetry: why the universe contains matter rather than antimatter. This fundamental question remains unsolved despite decades of research. Antimatter exists naturally in small quantities, such as in radioactive decay of potassium in bananas, but these sources provide insufficient material for meaningful scientific study. The controlled transport represents a critical step toward advancing particle physics understanding.

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