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AFP - Scientists at CERN said they had trapped dozens of hydrogen "antimatter" atoms, a technical feat that boosts research into one of the great puzzles of particle physics.

Under a theory expounded in 1931 by the eccentric British physicist Paul Dirac, when energy transforms into matter, it produces a particle and its mirror image -- called an anti-particle -- which holds the opposite electrical charge.

When particles and anti-particles collide, they annihilate each other in a small flash of energy.

If everything were equal at the birth of the cosmos, matter and anti-matter would have existed in the same quantities. The observable Universe would have had no chance of coming into being, as these opposing particles would have wiped each other out.

In reality, though, matter came to be far more dominant, and antimatter is rare.

But understanding why there is this huge imbalance presents a daunting technical challenge.

Until now, experiments have produced anti-atoms, namely of hydrogen, but only in a free state. That means they instantly collide with ordinary matter and get annihilated, making it impossible to measure them or study their structure.

In a paper published on Wednesday by the British journal Nature, a team at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva explain a method of snaring these so-called antihydrogen atoms.

Experiments conducted in its ALPHA laboratory found a way of using strong, complex magnetic fields and a vacuum to capture and hold the mirror-image particles apart from ordinary matter.

Thousands of antihydrogen atoms have been made in the lab, but in the most successful experiment so far, 38 have been trapped long enough -- one-tenth of a second -- for them to be studied.

"For reasons that no-one yet understands, nature ruled out antimatter," CERN physicist Jeffrey Hangst said.

"It is thus very rewarding, and a bit overwhelming, to look at the ALPHA device and know that it contains stable, neutral atoms of antimatter. This inspires us to work that much harder to see if antimatter holds some secret."

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ANCIENT CITY FOUND,
IRRADIATED FROM ATOMIC BLAST

Radiation still so intense, the area is highly dangerous

A heavy layer of radioactive ash in Rajasthan, India, covers a three-square mile area, ten miles west of Jodhpur. Scientists are investigating the site, where a housing development was being built.

For some time it has been established that there is a very high rate of birth defects and cancer in the area under construction. The levels of radiation there have registered so high on investigators' gauges that the Indian government has now cordoned off the region. Scientists have unearthed an ancient city where evidence shows an atomic blast dating back thousands of years, from 8,000 to 12,000 years, destroyed most of the buildings and probably a half-million people. One researcher estimates that the nuclear bomb used was about the size of the ones dropped on Japan in 1945.

The Mahabharata clearly describes a catastrophic blast that rocked the continent. "A single projectile charged with all the power in the Universe...An incandescent column of smoke and flame as bright as 10,000 suns, rose in all its splendor...it was an unknown weapon, an iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death which reduced to ashes an entire race.

"The corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. Their hair and nails fell out, pottery broke without any apparent cause, and the birds turned white.

"After a few hours, all foodstuffs were infected. To escape from this fire, the soldiers threw themselves into the river."

A HISTORIAN COMMENTS

Historian Kisari Mohan Ganguli says that Indian sacred writings are full of such descriptions, which sound like an atomic blast as experienced in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He says references mention fighting sky chariots and final weapons. An ancient battle is described in the Drona Parva, a section of the Mahabharata. "The passage tells of combat where explosions of final weapons decimate entire armies, causing crowds of warriors with steeds and elephants and weapons to be carried away as if they were dry leaves of trees," says Ganguli.

"Instead of mushroom clouds, the writer describes a perpendicular explosion with its billowing smoke clouds as consecutive openings of giant parasols. There are comments about the contamination of food and people's hair falling out."

ARCHEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION PROVIDES INFORMATION

Archeologist Francis Taylor says that etchings in some nearby temples he has managed to translate suggest that they prayed to be spared from the great light that was coming to lay ruin to the city. "It's so mid-boggling to imagine that some civilization had nuclear technology before we did. The radioactive ash adds credibility to the ancient Indian records that describe atomic warfare."

Construction has halted while the five member team conducts the investigation. The foreman of the project is Lee Hundley, who pioneered the investigation after the high level of radiation was discovered.

There is evidence that the Rama empire (now India) was devastated by nuclear war. The Indus valley is now the Thar desert, and the site of the radioactive ash found west of Jodhpur is around there.

Consider these verses from the ancient (6500 BC at the latest) Mahabharata:

...a single projectile
Charged with all the power of the Universe.
An incandescent column of smoke and flame
As bright as the thousand suns
Rose in all its splendour...
a perpendicular explosion
with its billowing smoke clouds...
...the cloud of smoke
rising after its first explosion
formed into expanding round circles
like the opening of giant parasols...

..it was an unknown weapon,
An iron thunderbolt,
A gigantic messenger of death,
Which reduced to ashes
The entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas.
...The corpses were so burned
As to be unrecognisable.
The hair and nails fell out;
Pottery broke without apparent cause,
And the birds turned white.

After a few hours
All foodstuffs were infected...
...to escape from this fire
The soldiers threw themselves in streams
To wash themselves and their equipment.


Until the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, modern mankind could not imagine any weapon as horrible and devastating as those described in the ancient Indian texts. Yet they very accurately described the effects of an atomic explosion. Radioactive poisoning will make hair and nails fall out. Immersing oneself in water gives some respite, though it is not a cure.

When excavations of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro reached the street level, they discovered skeletons scattered about the cities, many holding hands and sprawling in the streets as if some instant, horrible doom had taken place. People were just lying, unburied, in the streets of the city. And these skeletons are thousands of years old, even by traditional archaeological standards. What could cause such a thing? Why did the bodies not decay or get eaten by wild animals? Furthermore, there is no apparent cause of a physically violent death.

These skeletons are among the most radioactive ever found, on par with those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At one site, Soviet scholars found a skeleton which had a radioactive level 50 times greater than normal. Other cities have been found in northern India that show indications of explosions of great magnitude. One such city, found between the Ganges and the mountains of Rajmahal, seems to have been subjected to intense heat. Huge masses of walls and foundations of the ancient city are fused together, literally vitrified! And since there is no indication of a volcanic eruption at Mohenjo-Daro or at the other cities, the intense heat to melt clay vessels can only be explained by an atomic blast or some other unknown weapon. The cities were wiped out entirely.

While the skeletons have been carbon-dated to 2500 BC, we must keep in mind that carbon-dating involves measuring the amount of radiation left. When atomic explosions are involved, that makes then seem much younger.

Interestingly, Manhattan Project chief scientist Dr J. Robert Oppenheimer was known to be familiar with ancient Sanskrit literature. In an interview conducted after he watched the first atomic test, he quoted from the Bhagavad Gita: "'Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.' I suppose we all felt that way." When asked in an interview at Rochester University seven years after the Alamogordo nuclear test whether that was the first atomic bomb ever to be detonated, his reply was, "Well, yes, in modern history."

Ancient cities whose brick and stonewalls have literally been vitrified, that is, fused together, can be found in India, Ireland, Scotland, France, Turkey and other places. There is no logical explanation for the vitrification of stone forts and cities, except from an atomic blast.

Another curious sign of an ancient nuclear war in India is a giant crater near Bombay. The nearly circular 2,154-metre-diameter Lonar crater, located 400 kilometres northeast of Bombay and aged at less than 50,000 years old, could be related to nuclear warfare of antiquity. No trace of any meteoric material, etc., has been found at the site or in the vicinity, and this is the world's only known "impact" crater in basalt. Indications of great shock (from a pressure exceeding 600,000 atmospheres) and intense, abrupt heat (indicated by basalt glass spherules) can be ascertained from the site.

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Buckeye Oysters said:
Quantum physics is all about math equations.  Until there is a physical model to explain antimatter, etc.. I remain skeptical.

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Among many, many, things, quantum mechanics is responsible for digital cameras (CCDs), lasers, transistors, electron microsopes... the list goes on and on.

Oh, and quantum mechanics just happens to be one of the most tested and successful theories ever put forth in science.  Ever.  Even better than Newton's Laws.

I think what you meant was: "I don't understand quantum mechanics, therefore I don't believe in it."