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Antihydrogen


Antihydrogen (
H
) is the antimatter counterpart of hydrogen. Whereas the common hydrogen atom is composed of an electron and proton, the antihydrogen atom is made up of a positron and antiproton. Scientists hope studying antihydrogen may shed light on the question of why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe, known as the baryon asymmetry problem. Antihydrogen is produced artificially in particle accelerators. In 1999, NASA gave a cost estimate of $62.5 trillion per gram of antihydrogen (equivalent to $90 trillion today), making it the most expensive material to produce. This is due to the extremely low yield per experiment, and high opportunity cost of using a particle accelerator.

Accelerators detected hot antihydrogen in the 1990s. ATHENA studied cold
H
in 2002. It was first trapped by the Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus (ALPHA) team at CERN in 2010, who then measured the structure and other important properties. ALPHA, AEGIS, and GBAR plan to further cool and study
H
atoms.


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