Scientists Blast Antimatter Atoms With A Laser For The First Time

"In a technological tour de force, scientists have developed a new way to probe antimatter."

"For the first time, researchers were able to zap antimatter atoms with a laser, then precisely measure the light let off by these strange anti-atoms. By comparing the light from anti-atoms with the light from regular atoms, they hope to answer one of the big mysteries of our universe: Why, in the early universe, did antimatter lose out to regular old matter?"

"'This represents a historic point in the decades-long efforts to create antimatter and compare its properties to those of matter,' says Alan Kostelecky, a theoretical physicist at Indiana University."

"Antimatter sounds like something out of science fiction. 'The first time I heard about antimatter was on Star Trek, when I was a kid," says Jeffrey Hangst, a physicist at Aarhus University in Denmark. "I was intrigued by what it was and then kind of shocked to learn that it was a real thing in physics.'"