{"id":21093,"date":"2016-01-22T11:47:45","date_gmt":"2016-01-22T19:47:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/alpha-experiment-shows-antihydrogen-charge-is-neutral"},"modified":"2017-06-04T11:04:25","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T18:04:25","slug":"alpha-experiment-shows-antihydrogen-charge-is-neutral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/alpha-experiment-shows-antihydrogen-charge-is-neutral","title":{"rendered":"ALPHA experiment shows antihydrogen charge is neutral"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-fN91hlZ5LU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In a paper published in the journal <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/nature\/journal\/v529\/n7586\/full\/nature16491.html\">Nature<\/a>, researchers at CERN\u2019s ALPHA experiment have shown \u2013 to the most accurate degree yet \u2013 that particles of antihydrogen have a neutral electrical charge.<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/home.cern\/about\/physics\/standard-model\">the Standard Model<\/a>, which explains how the basic building blocks of matter interact, all <a href=\"http:\/\/home.cern\/topics\/antimatter\">antimatter<\/a> \u2013 such as antihydrogen \u2013 should have the exact opposite charge to its matter counterpart. For example, in a hydrogen atom a negatively charged electron combines with a positively charged proton to give a net charge of zero. In contrast, an antihydrogen atom should have a positively charged positron combining with a negatively charged antiproton to give a net charge of zero. The Standard Model also says that during <a href=\"http:\/\/home.cern\/about\/physics\/early-universe\">the Big Bang<\/a> equal amounts of antimatter and matter were created. But today this isn\u2019t the case, there is much less antimatter in the universe than matter.<\/p>\n<p>Since physicists know that hydrogen has a neutral charge, by studying the charge of antihydrogen, they hoped to see something different or surprising, which could help scientists to understand why nature has a preference for matter over antimatter. \u201cIt\u2019s a very important question: is the universe neutral? Do all the positive charges and negative charges have exactly the opposite sign and to what level can you determine that?\u201d explains Jeffrey Hangst, the spokesperson for the <a href=\"http:\/\/home.cern\/about\/experiments\/alpha\">ALPHA<\/a> experiment at <a href=\"http:\/\/home.cern\/about\/accelerators\/antiproton-decelerator\">CERN\u2019s Antiproton Decelerator<\/a> (AD) and the lead scientist on the study. \u201cFor normal matter that\u2019s known very precisely: to about one part in 10<sup>21<\/sup>, that\u2019s one and 21 zeros, that\u2019s an enormous number, we really know that well. Now we have the first opportunity to study this with antiatoms, with antihydrogen, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re publishing now. We made the best possible study that we can make with trapped antihydrogen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/home.cern\/about\/updates\/2016\/01\/alpha-experiment-shows-antihydrogen-charge-neutral\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a paper published in the journal Nature, researchers at CERN\u2019s ALPHA experiment have shown \u2013 to the most accurate degree yet \u2013 that particles of antihydrogen have a neutral electrical charge. According to the Standard Model, which explains how the basic building blocks of matter interact, all antimatter \u2013 such as antihydrogen \u2013 should [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":387,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/387"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21093"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63160,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21093\/revisions\/63160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}