This showed the team the presence of
antimatter in the vicinity of lightning.
But when this principle, known as charge parity, or CP, symmetry, is violated, matter and
antimatter act differently.
Scientists believe that almost equal amounts of matter and
antimatter were created in the Big Bang, but it remains an unsolved problem why the visible universe today is composed mostly of ordinary matter.
The positron is the
antimatter of the electron, having an opposite charge of the electron, but the other properties are the same.
Antimatter research could reveal why more matter than
antimatter survived the Big Bang at the start of the universe.
Measuring the electric charge of antihydrogen atoms is a way to study any subtle differences between matter and
antimatter which could account for the lack of
antimatter in the universe.
Scientists think the universe contained equal parts of matter and
antimatter after the Big Bang, believed to have started everything 13.
As far as we know, the Big Bang created equal amounts of matter and
antimatter, but today's universe contains matter only.
This is the first time
antimatter has been captured in a "normal" state rather than the short-lived.
Antimatter particles match familiar particles such as protons and electrons but have the opposite electric charge.
They have capped five years of work by containing, for the first time, a few atoms of
antimatter.
Holding the
antimatter in a vacuum for this fraction of a second allowed the physicists to study the atoms, CERN said in an article in the British journal Nature.
