The discovery of the antiproton in 1955 proved the existence of antimatter. Physicists built high-energy particle accelerators to discover it, and in 1995, CERN created the first antiatoms. However, producing antimatter is inefficient and not currently viable for practical applications. In the future, it could be useful for long interstellar travel as a form of energy storage.
In October 1955, the front page of The New York Times read: “New particle atom found; Defined a negative proton”. Although antielectrons, known as positrons), had been discovered more than two decades earlier, in 1932, the discovery of the antiproton proved that the whole idea of antimatter was no fluke, and that all kinds of matter really do have evil twins. Antimatter is a form of matter identical to conventional matter except that it has an opposite charge and annihilates upon contact with ordinary matter, releasing an amount of energy determined by Einstein’s famous equation, E=MC2.
The whole era of high-energy particle accelerators began in an attempt to discover the antiproton. Ever since the discovery of the positron, physicists have suspected that the antiproton existed. They built cyclotrons that probed progressively higher energies to see if the antiprotons could be found.
In 1954, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Earnest Lawrence built the Bevatron in Berkeley, California, a massive particle accelerator capable of colliding two protons at 6.2 GeV (giga-electron-volt), which was predicted to be the ideal range for antimatter creation. Around 6.2 GeV and above, particles collide with energies so great that new matter is created. This is a consequence of E=MC2: it generates sufficient energy and the production of matter follows. When new matter is made out of thin air, equal amounts of particles and antiparticles are formed. A magnetic field can absorb negatively charged antiprotons and they can be detected. This is how antimatter is to be produced.
Many years later, at CERN in the early 1990s, scientists managed to create the first antiatoms, in particular antihydrogen. This was done by accelerating antiprotons to relativistic speeds alongside conventional atoms. In specific cases, by passing close to the nucleus of the atom, their energy would be sufficient to force the creation of an electron-antielectron pair. Occasionally, the antielectron paired with the passing antiproton, creating a single antihydrogen atom. In 1995, CERN confirmed that it had successfully created nine antihydrogen atoms. The era of true antimatter production had begun.
Unfortunately, the uses for antimatter production are limited. It is created with such tremendous inefficiencies that producing substantial quantities would dry up the power supply of the entire planet. This is why we have little to fear from the hypothetical creation of an antimatter bomb: the technology is not viable. In the distant future, antimatter could be considered an efficient form of energy storage for long interstellar travel. For pretty much any application, batteries would be superior, but for special applications when you want to trap tons of energy in a tiny space, antimatter might be of interest.
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