Scientists make rare achievement in study of antimatter

Through hard work, ingenuity and a little cooperation from nature, scientists on the BASE experiment vastly improved their measurement of a property of protons and antiprotons. Scientists at CERN are celebrating a recent, rare achievement in precision physics: Collaborators on the BASE experiment measured a property of antimatter 350 times as precisely as it had ever been measured before.

The BASE experiment looks for undiscovered differences between protons and their antimatter counterparts, antiprotons. The result, published in the journal Nature, uncovered no such difference, but BASE scientists say they are hopeful the leap in the effectiveness of their measurement has potentially brought them closer to a discovery.