If we really wish to fathom the mysteries of antimatter, we must first get to grips with the stuff itself. Easier said than done. How on earth do you pin down a substance that vanishes the moment it touches anything?
Two CERN experiments, ATRAP and ALPHA, are grappling with that question. Their aim is to make antihydrogen - the simplest anti-atom possible, just an antiproton and a positron bound together - in sufficient quantity and for long enough to compare the spectrum of light it emits with that of regular hydrogen. Even the slightest difference between the two would shake up the standard model.
The experiments require a near-perfect vacuum, as encountering a mere atom of air would spell the end for any antiparticle, and there must be some way of trapping the antiparticles: not in a conventional container, but using electric and magnetic fields.
ATRAP and ATHENA, ALPHA's forerunner, did successfully isolate antihydrogen in 2002, bringing together antiprotons from a particle accelerator and positrons from a sodium radioactive source in a magnetic trap. Unfortunately, such success is fleeting: magnetic traps work just fine for charged particles such as antiprotons and positrons, but antihydrogen is neutral, so it can slip right through the containing field lines.
It's a problem ATRAP and ALPHA are still working on. "Capturing antihydrogen atoms is the current frontier, and it's a challenge," says Rolf Landua, a physicist at CERN who advised on the Angels and Demons movie and is rumoured to be the inspiration for Leonardo Vetra, an antimatter scientist in the original story. "So far nobody has managed to do it, but I'm pretty sure we will." Still, encasing a smouldering chunk of antimatter in a portable antihydrogen trap as happens in the book is a quite a way off, he says.
