CERN's ALPHA Experiment

See, I like this. I like to highlight things that most of the general public simply don't know much about, especially when another major facility throws a huge shadow over it.

This article mentions two important things about CERN: It is more than just the LHC, and it highlights another very important experiment, the ALPHA experiment.

ALPHA’s main aim is to study the internal structure of the antihydrogen atom, and see if there exist any discernible differences within it that set it apart from regular hydrogen. In 2010 ALPHA was the first experiment to trap 38 antihydrogen atoms (an antielectron orbiting an antiproton) for about one-fifth of a second and then the team perfected its apparatus and technique to trap a total of 309 antihydrogen atoms for 1000 s in 2011. Hangst hopes that with the new updated ALPHA 2 device (which includes lasers for spectroscopy), the researchers will soon see precisely what lies within an antihydrogen atom by studying its spectrum. They had a very short test run of a few weeks with ALPHA 2 late last year, and will begin their next set of experiment in earnest in the coming months.

They will be producing more amazing results in the future, because this is all uncharted territory. 

Zz.