In “Antimatter atoms trapped for 16 minutes” Emily Chung reports (CBC News, June 6, 2011),
The scientists’ recent achievement has extended the experimental lifetime of antihydrogen atoms 5,000-fold since the ALPHA experiment — an international collaboration Fujiwara is part of — first figured out how to trap them at all.
This is, scientists say, enough time to make serious study feasible. When antimatter was first trapped, it could be held for less than one-fifth of a second. One proposal:
… researchers can point lasers and microwaves at the antiatoms and figure out how the colours of light they shine back compare to those shone back by hydrogen atoms under the same circumstances, Fujiwara said.
Guesses as to how that’ll turn out?