{"id":245797,"date":"2026-10-22T05:39:43","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T10:39:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/physicists-trap-and-tame-single-particle-of-antimatter-for-months"},"modified":"2026-10-22T05:39:43","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T10:39:43","slug":"physicists-trap-and-tame-single-particle-of-antimatter-for-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/physicists-trap-and-tame-single-particle-of-antimatter-for-months","title":{"rendered":"Physicists trap and tame single particle of antimatter for months"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>For the first time, Northwestern University physicists have coaxed a single positron\u2014the antimatter counterpart of an electron\u2014into an exquisitely controlled quantum state.<\/p>\n<p>After capturing the fast-moving particle from radioactive decay, the scientists cooled it to nearly absolute zero. Then, they suspended the particle in a near-perfect vacuum, preventing it from touching ordinary matter\u2014an encounter that would cause it to vanish.<\/p>\n<p>By trapping and cooling a positron this way, the scientists created what they call a \u201cone-positron quantum cyclotron.\u201d In this state, the positron essentially behaves much like an artificial atom with quantum energy levels scientists can precisely control and observe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the first time, Northwestern University physicists have coaxed a single positron\u2014the antimatter counterpart of an electron\u2014into an exquisitely controlled quantum state. After capturing the fast-moving particle from radioactive decay, the scientists cooled it to nearly absolute zero. Then, they suspended the particle in a near-perfect vacuum, preventing it from touching ordinary matter\u2014an encounter that [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245797","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245797\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}