Hot on the heels of last year's breakthrough, in which physicists briefly captured antihydrogen atoms, comes a 5,800-fold increase in the length of time that atoms of the elusive substance can be trapped.

Researchers working on the ALPHA experiment at CERN, Europe's particle physics laboratory near Geneva in Switzerland, used a magnetic trap to hold a small number of antihydrogen atoms, which consist of a positron orbiting an antiproton, for as long as 1,000 seconds. The achievement may enable studies of the energy levels of antihydrogen, and allow comparison of the properties of matter with antimatter.

Nature Phys. doi:10.1038/nphys2025 (2011)