<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Upping the Anti:</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Canadian researchers instrumental in game-changing antimatter study </font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">TRIUMF News Release </font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">For Immediate Release</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">(Vancouver, BC) Science fiction is fast approaching science fact as</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">researchers are progressing rapidly toward "bottling" antimatter. In</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">a paper published online today by the journal Nature Physics, the</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">ALPHA experiment at CERN, including key Canadian contributors, reports</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">that it has succeeded in storing antimatter atoms for over 16 minutes.</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">While carrying around bottled antimatter like in the movie Angels and</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Demons remains fundamentally far-fetched, storing antimatter for long</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">periods of time opens up new vistas for scientists struggling to</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">understand this elusive substance. ALPHA managed to store twice the</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">antihydrogen (the antimatter partner to normal hydrogen) 5,000 times</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">longer than the previous best, setting the stage, for example, to test</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">whether antihydrogen and normal hydrogen fall the same way due to</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">gravity.</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Lead author Makoto Fujiwara, TRIUMF research scientist, University of</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Calgary adjunct professor, and spokesperson of the Canadian part of</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">the ALPHA team said,"We know we have confined antihydrogen atoms for</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">at least for 1,000 seconds. That's almost as long as one period in</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">hockey! This is potentially a game changer in antimatter research."</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Antimatter remains one of the biggest mysteries of science. At the</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Big Bang, matter and antimatter should have been produced equally, but</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">since they destroy each other upon contact, eventually nothing should</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">have remained but pure energy (light). However, all observations</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">suggest that only the antimatter has vanished. To figure out what</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">happened to the lost half of the universe, scientists are eager to</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">determine if, as predicted, the laws of physics are the same for both</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">matter and antimatter. ALPHA uses an analogue of a very well-known</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">system in physics, the hydrogen atom (one electron orbiting one</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">proton), and testing whether its antimatter twin, antihydrogen (an</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">antielectron orbiting an antiproton), behaves the same. But to study</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">something one must hold onto it long enough.</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Fujiwara asks, "Does antimatter shine in the same colour as matter?</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Does it experience the gravity in the same way as matter? These are</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">still very difficult experiments, and they will take long and hard</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">work, but this new result is a very important step. Now experiments</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">will be about 10,000 times less difficult than before!" Explained</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">ALPHA spokesperson Jeffrey Hangst of Aarhus University, "This would</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">provide the first-ever look inside the structure of antihydrogen -</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">element 1 on the anti-periodic table."</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Antihydrogen atoms were first made in large quantities at CERN eight</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">years ago, but can't be stored conventionally since antiatoms touching</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">the ordinary-matter walls of a bottle would instantly annihilate. The</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">ALPHA collaboration succeeded by developing a sophisticated "magnetic</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">bottle" using a state-of-the-art superconducting magnet to suspend the</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">antiatoms away from the walls, last year demonstrating definitive</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">proof of antihydrogen atom capture for about a tenth of a second,</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">likely the first contained antiatoms in the history of the universe.</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Canadian scientists have been playing leading roles in the</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">antihydrogen detection and data analysis aspects of the project. The</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">next step for ALPHA is to start performing measurements on bottled</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">antihydrogen, and this is due to get underway later this year. The</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">first step is to illuminate the trapped anti-atoms with microwaves to</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">determine if they absorb exactly the same frequencies (or energies) as</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">their matter twins.</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">"I've always liked hydrogen atoms", said Walter Hardy of the</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">University of British Columbia, a leading expert in atomic hydrogen</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">studies. "It's ironic that we are now trying to measure the same</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">properties of antihydrogen that I measured many years ago on regular</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">hydrogen. It is a crucial comparison, though, and will tell us if we</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">truly understand the relationship between matter and antimatter."</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Support for ALPHA-Canada and its research came from NSERC (National</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Science and Engineering Research Council, TRIUMF, AIF (Alberta</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Ingenuity Fund), the Killam Trust, and FQRNT (Le Fonds quebecois de la</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">recherche sur la nature et les technologies). </font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"> ### </font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">About TRIUMF: </font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">TRIUMF is Canada's national laboratory for particle and nuclear</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">physics. Located on the south campus of the University of British</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Columbia, TRIUMF is owned and operated as a joint venture by a</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">consortium of the following Canadian universities, via a contribution</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">through the National Research Council Canada and building capital</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">funds from the Government of British Columbia: University of Alberta,</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">University of British Columbia, University of Calgary, Carleton</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">University, University of Guelph, University of Manitoba, McMaster</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">University, Universite de Montreal, University of Northern British</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Columbia, Queen's University, University of Regina, Saint Mary's</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">University, Simon Fraser University, University of Toronto, University</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">of Victoria, University of Winnipeg, York University. </font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">See <a href="http://www.triumf.ca">http://www.triumf.ca</a>. </font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">About ALPHA-Canada: </font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">ALPHA is a collaboration of about 40 physicists from 15 institutions</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">from Canada, Brazil, Denmark, Israel, Japan, Sweden, UK, and the</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">USA. ALPHA-Canada currently consists of 8 senior scientists, 5</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">graduate students, and several professional staff from 5 Canadian</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">institutions. ALPHA-Canada constitute about one third of the entire</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">ALPHA collaboration. 14 out of 40 ALPHA co-authors in the reported</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">work are with ALPHA-Canada: Andrea Gutierrez, Sarah Seif El Nasr,</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Walter Hardy (Univ. of British Columbia), Tim Friesen, Richard</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Hydomako, Robert Thompson (Univ. of Calgary), Mohammad Ashkezari,</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Michael Hayden (Simon Fraser Univ.), Scott Menary (York Univ.), Makoto</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Fujiwara, David Gill, Leonid Kurchaninov, Konstantin Olchanski, Art</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Olin, James Storey (TRIUMF).</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">See <a href="http://alpha.web.cern.ch/alpha">http://alpha.web.cern.ch/alpha</a> & <a href="http://angelsanddemons.cern.ch">http://angelsanddemons.cern.ch</a>. </font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Media Contacts </font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">--------------</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Dr. Makoto Fujiwara</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Research Scientist</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">TRIUMF / U. Calgary</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Tel: 604-222-7585</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Cell: 604.363.5028</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><a href="mailto:makoto.fujiwara@triumf.ca">makoto.fujiwara@triumf.ca</a></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Dr. Marcello Pavan </font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Outreach & Communications</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">TRIUMF</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Tel: 604.222.7525</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Cell: 604 868 7466</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><a href="mailto:outreach@triumf.ca">outreach@triumf.ca</a></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">en francais: Ms Andrea Gutierrez</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Graduate Student</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">UBC </font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier">Tel: +41.76.487.3832</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><a href="mailto:andrea.gutierrez@triumf.ca">andrea.gutierrez@triumf.ca</a></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Courier"></font></div></body></html>