That is where the real punch line is Professor Gabrielse said

That is where the real punch line is,” Professor Gabrielse said.To make the comparisons the researchers will have to slow down and then hold the antimatter atoms still for some time – possibly several weeks. If its antimatter counterpart behaves differently, even in the tiniest detail, most of the established theories would have to be rethought.Gerald Gabrielse, a professor of physics at Harvard, described the results from CERN as a “very interesting demonstration”. Making anti-hydrogen is a crucial step because hydrogen is the most important material in the universe – it accounts for about three-quarters of all the matter there is.Much of what physicists have learnt about the cosmos has come from a study of ordinary hydrogen. But the properties of antimatter took an even more bizarre twist in the late 1940s, when the American theorist Richard Feynman extended Dirac’s theory and showed that antiparticles were really just ordinary particles but were travelling backwards in time.With this sort of pedigree, antimatter has fascinated physicists ever since and the motivation behind the present experiments is to check that the theories hold good. Dirac predicted that electrons – the ordinary particles that orbit the atomic nucleus, form chemical bonds between atoms and which carry electrical current along metal wires – should have a counterpart.

Where the electron was negatively charged, the “positron” – anti-electron – should be positively charged and all the other quantum numbers denoting the nature of the particle should be reversed.In 1932, Dirac’s prediction was vindicated when a young American called Carl Anderson pictured the tracks left behind by positrons in a shower of cosmic rays. But although the “Dirac equation”, as it is now known, is today recognised as a creation of genius, it appeared at the time to be a complex piece of abstract mathematics.Few people believed him, the concept seemed so outlandish. through which we can get to a completely new understanding of the reality of the universe.”The British physicist Paul Dirac was the first to predict the existence of antimatter, in 1928, as a result of his theory marrying quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of special relativity. More energy was consumed by the particle accelerator at CERN, where they were created, than was liberated at their demise.”This discovery opens the door into a completely new anti-world,” said Dr Neil Calder, a CERN spokesman “This may be a tiny Alice in Wonderland door … “Even if it were possible to produce a lot of antimatter, the technological problems of keeping it are enormous,” he said.For a start, their harvest was meagre: just nine atoms of anti-hydrogen created over a period of three weeks, each one of them lasting only for about 40 billionths of a second, travelling at nearly the speed of light some 10 metres before their extinction on collision with an atom of ordinary matter. But the CERN physicists have not boldly gone and developed a new energy source.Despite his team’s achievement, Professor Oelert was “extremely pessimistic” that his discovery would ever lead to a new type of energy.

Like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, it appears identical in every respect to its twin, ordinary hydrogen – the simplest chemical element in the universe.
But the constituents of anti-hydrogen have physical properties that exactly cancel out those of the normal atom, so if one atom touches its antimatter counterpart they annihilate each other in a burst of energy.Talk of “antimatter engines” and “positron drives” will be familiar even to a casual viewer of Star Trek, where the vast energy released when matter and antimatter collide is used to power the USS Enterprise. Professor Walter Oelert and his colleagues have made anti-hydrogen at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, CERN, near Geneva. Like Alice stepping through the looking glass, European physicists have started to explore the mirror image to our everyday world by creating the first atoms on earth composed entirely of “antimatter”. What was important for him was his judgement of himself.Francois Maurice Marie Mitterrand, politician: born Jarnac, Charente 26 October 1916; Secretary General, Organisation for POWs, War Victims and Refugees 1944-46; Deputy for Nievre, National Assembly 1946-58, 1962- 81; Minister for Ex-Servicemen, Secretary of State to Presidency of the Council and Minister of State 1947-54; National President, Union Democratique et Socialiste de la Resistance 1951-52; Minister of the Interior 1954- 55; Minister of State for Justice 1956-57; Mayor of Chateau-Chinon 1959- 81; Senator for Nievre 1959-62; President, Federation of Democratic and Socialist Left 1965-68; First Secretary, Socialist Party 1971-81; President of France 1981-95; married 1944 Danielle Gouze (two sons); died Paris 8 January 1996.. More striking was his conversation with the Nobel prizewinner Elie Wiesel, which appeared, as Memoire a deux, as he retired.

He had worked hard on this volume, preparing his remarks with constant writing and rewriting. He spoke of his childhood, his ambitions, his religious interests, and much else Politics, he said, did not confer supreme power. This was reserved for those who had the ability to create.In all these interventions, Francois Mitterrand took care not to appear as a politician, but rather as a philosopher He was not seeking to justify himself to others. Francois Mitterrand was true to himself.The solemnity of retirement came from the knowledge that the former President’s life was drawing to a close (especially when it was known that he had chosen the plot of land where he wished to be buried). But he continued to surprise his entourage, especially the doctor who always accompanied him, by taking long walks in the countryside and by visiting Venice and Egypt. As he expected, the new President reversed his policy by accepting Republican responsibility for the rounding-up of Jews during the occupation But Mitterrand kept silent. He was resigned to the return of Bousquet to public attention – the disturbed man who had assassinated Bousquet in June 1993 was put on trial in November 1995 – but he was irritated by the speculation about the wealth he had supposedly accumulated during his Presidency.He was said to be annoyed when his friend and former adviser Jacques Attali published a further volume of extracts from his conversations, but he may well have been secretly delighted to read the disparaging wit with which he had treated his most eminent political opponents.

Was this a final plea for Europe, and for the Franco-German friendship that is the essence of Europe? Was it a plea to reconcile the past with the present that was personal as well as political? For some, it was a speech that should not have been made; for others it was intensely moving; it was provocative and ambiguous. No ceremony was to accompany the transfer of power to Chirac and his leaving the Elysee Palace on 17 May.There were surprises. Attending the VE celebrations on 9 May in Germany, he praised the bravery of the German soldiers in the war, and claimed that the victory of the Allies was the victory of Europe over itself. He was also a countryman, tending his oaks and exercising his dogs in his property in south-west France. He was cultivated, well-acquainted with classical literature, speaking and writing an elegant French, on good terms with many writers and artists. He was highly successful with women, a fact that never created scandal, but enforced his position as someone to be admired.With a great sense of history, Mitterrand sought to leave his mark on Paris with buildings, such as Opera-Bastille, the Pyramid at the Louvre and the new national library by the Gare d’Austerlitz.