Antimatter is old hat to physicists. After all, it was way back in 1933 when they discovered the first "antipar-ticles"- exact duplicates of ordinary particles except that they have an opposite electric charge. Since it usually takes only a few millionths of a second for antimatter particles to come into contact with their matter counterparts, thus annihilating themselves in tiny bursts of energy, physicists have concentrated on finding ways to make them sit still long enough to do something interesting with them. In particular, they have been trying for 15 years to combine an antiproton with an antielectronto form an antihydrogen atom.
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