At CERN's Antimatter Factory, researchers create and guide antiprotons and antielectrons together to form antihydrogen, and all these antiparticles are analyzed to help scientists study the behavior of antimatter.

Antimatter particles possess the same mass and spin as their normal particle counterparts, but possess an opposite charge and transform into pure energy upon colliding with normal matter.

In 2026, researchers successfully transported antimatter in a truck using a portable trap that employed electromagnetic fields to hold 92 antiprotons.

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second.

Antimatter can be created from dark lightning—high-energy light emitted by deflected electrons after they are accelerated to near the speed of light by thunderstorms.

In 1997, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory identified 'positron geysers'—fountains of antimatter particles—emerging from near the center of the Milky Way.

Antimatter was discovered by examining debris from collisions between atmospheric gases and cosmic rays—high-energy matter particles from space.

Depictions of antimatter in science fiction include misleading portrayals of it coming from parallel universes, being mined from asteroids, and serving as a workable laser beam.

If they could be built, antimatter drives, which run on energy released from the collision of matter and antimatter particles, would be the most efficient engines in existence.

A beam of neutrinos can be created by firing a beam of high-energy protons at a target to produce unstable particles that decay into neutrinos.

Within ALICE—A Large Ion Collider Experiment—at the Large Hadron Collider, scientists have created quark-gluon plasma—an exotic form of matter present in the moments after the Big Bang.

Antimatter's rarity across the cosmos is one of the biggest problems in modern physics because the high-energy environment of the early universe should have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter.

If particle accelerators did create black holes by packing tremendous energy into a small volume, then trillions would be created in Earth's atmosphere daily by cosmic rays.

Particle accelerators propel matter toward small targets at high speed

Devices like cathode-ray tube televisions were once basic particle accelerators, but modern ones, such as the Large Hadron Collider, use massive magnetic fields and circular tunnels to achieve energies high enough to recreate the conditions just after the big bang.

Antimatter was predicted to exist four years before it was observed, though the mathematics responsible for the prediction described it as matter with negative energy.

Learn about five of the largest particle accelerators on Earth, which, as of 2026, are led by the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

Some particles that mediate fundamental forces in nature are their own antiparticles, such as photons—particles of light and mediators of the electromagnetic force.

Before 1932, when particle accelerators were first used for nuclear research, scientists relied on naturally radioactive substances to advance their understanding of the atomic nucleus.

As of 2026, 75 of the 86 particles discovered by the Large Hadron Collider have been found by the LHCb experiment—a detector that explores the decay of particles made of beauty and charm quarks.

View a step-by-step breakdown of how helium is forged in stars alongside antimatter

During the proton-proton chain, four hydrogen nuclei—protons—are fused together to create an alpha particle—a helium nucleus—and produce the energy that supports a star's own weight. Through radioactive decay, two of these protons become neutrons, with each releasing an antielectron, or positron, and an electron neutrino.

Each year, the Large Hadron Collider undergoes a winter shutdown—when electricity costs are highest—and bringing it back online requires weeks of tests, including some involving high-energy particles from outer space.

At the Large Hadron Collider, protons are accelerated so close to the speed of light that they would lag behind a laser by just 10 feet after 14 minutes of travel.

Although built from 1996 to 2008, the Large Hadron Collider relies on accelerators built starting in 1954 to help bring protons to 99.9999991% the speed of light—about 2.73 million football fields per second.

It may be possible to create dark matter in particle accelerators

In high-energy collisions, exotic forms of matter can be produced by directly converting energy into mass according to *E = mc*². Even though a dark matter particle would not be directly observable, its creation would result in unaccounted-for mass, which can be compared to potential dark matter candidates for indirect detection.

At the Large Hadron Collider, scientists have transformed lead into gold—a process known as chrysopoeia, which alchemists sought for centuries.

Particle accelerators have been used to reveal detailed ant anatomy

Using a synchrotron facility at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, a pair of X-ray beams swept across about 2,200 ant specimens to create over 200 terabytes of projection images from multiple angles. The images were compiled into micrometer-resolution 3D reconstructions of 792 species, which are freely accessible on the Antscan platform.

At the CERN Control Center, where the Large Hadron Collider and connected accelerators are managed, champagne bottles from parties commemorating major milestones, such as the first collisions or a new record energy, are collected.

Particle accelerators detect subatomic particles using millions of sensors

Calorimeters measure the energy of particles. Tracking devices can measure momentum and charge from the trajectory of particles, which is determined by recording tiny electrical signals. Time-of-flight detectors provide particle velocities directly and particle mass indirectly, giving physicists a suite of properties to compare with those of known matter.

The Higgs boson is a quanta, or discrete piece, of the Higgs field, which gives elementary particles, such as quarks and electrons, mass as they travel through it.

View the most expensive materials on Earth, led by antimatter and other elements forged in particle accelerators.

Watch how the machine at the heart of NASA's Cold Atom Lab produces atoms near absolute zero—the coldest theoretical temperature in the universe—for experiments involving quantum phenomena.

The average banana produces one positron—the antimatter counterpart to an electron—every 75 minutes as its trace amounts of radioactive potassium decay.

Watch an animated visualization of how the Large Hadron Collider works, including how particles are accelerated through a series of machines and how collision data is collected and distributed worldwide.

Simulate the impact of an antimatter bomb, which releases energy from the annihilation of matter with antimatter, around the world.

More than 97% of the world's particle accelerators are used for commercial purposes

Only a few hundred of the over 30,000 particle accelerators worldwide are used for research. Most are involved in medical imaging and treatment, food sterilization, semiconductor processing, cargo screening, and radioisotope production. They're also used to modify the properties of polymers.

CERN—the European Organization for Nuclear Research—is the world's largest particle physics laboratory, with the Large Hadron Collider serving as its largest tool.

The High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider will provide a tenfold increase in particle collisions compared with the initial LHC infrastructure by increasing the number of ions in collision bundles and by concentrating the ion beams.

Learn how to build your own cloud chamber to detect cosmic rays—particles from space that move near the speed of light—at home.

Fermilab's ICARUS experiment is searching for hypothetical sterile neutrinos

Neutrinos are a group of three chargeless, lightweight particles that can transform into one another via a quantum mechanical phenomenon called neutrino oscillations. The rate of these oscillations can be determined by measuring the amount of each type at different distances, where data inconsistencies would suggest the existence of new physics.

Particles produced in cosmic ray showers that would normally decay long before they reach Earth's surface are observed in ground-based detectors because they experience time more slowly when moving near the speed of light—a phenomenon predicted by special relativity.

Despite fears of creating black holes, the Large Hadron Collider produces collisions with energies of 13.6 trillion electronvolts, about one million times smaller than the energy needed to create the lightest possible black holes.

The hypothetical matter that neutron stars' cores may contain, including strange quarks

Models of the extreme pressures and energies in neutron stars suggest conditions resembling those believed to have existed within a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. In these environments, the quarks that make up protons and neutrons in trios may instead form pairs that combine to form one quantum object. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

As of 2025, LUX-ZEPLIN is the world's most sensitive dark matter experiment, which is designed to indirectly detect a potential candidate for the invisible form of matter.

Cosmic rays can be detected using cloud chambers—containers where alcohol vapor condenses around trails of ions created by these high-speed particles from space.

Explore the components of the linear particle accelerator at Los Alamos

Located at the site of bomb design and development for the Manhattan Project, LANSCE features an injector system for hydrogen ions, a series of tanks with alternating electric fields for proton acceleration, and an isotope production facility that creates radioisotopes for medical treatments.

Efforts to find Majorana particles may finally lead to reliable quantum computers

Though the particle—which is its own antiparticle—remains theoretical, scientists from Microsoft to Google continue developing systems to mimic this property towards building error-resistant quantum computers. Scientists at UCSB have been attempting to get the particle using just pencil lead and Scotch tape.

Nuclear fusion, where the nuclei of two atoms are combined, can produce near-limitless clean energy, but requires extreme conditions to kickstart because of the natural repulsion of atomic nuclei.

View a ranking of the masses of fundamental particles, from the massless photon to the top quark, and a timeline of their discoveries.

Scientists have determined the properties of cosmic rays by analyzing their trajectories in bubble chambers—containers filled with a vapor that clings to charged particles.

Fusion reactions and radioactive decay produce elements inside stars

Hydrogen, present since the early universe, serves as fuel for the proton-proton chain, producing helium, which is then incorporated into the CNO cycle to produce carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. Additional fusions of helium with these elements and subsequent decays via the alpha ladder produce elements up to iron and bismuth.

Some cosmic rays possess energies as high as 100,000,000 teraelectron volts—more than 10 million times the energy of particles accelerated in the Large Hadron Collider.