Scientists at CERN have made another breakthrough – announcing that they are now able to measure antimatter on the optical spectrum.

By shining a laser into trapped anti-atoms, the researchers could measure the energy levels of antihydrogen for the first time, a finding which could open up the mysteries of antimatter.

“This is a dream come true. This is what I set out to do more than 20 years ago, to actually look at this transition in an anti-hydrogen. There is a lot more work to do, but I can say that this is the biggest step in my career, in the history of this type of experiment and it opens up a whole new branch of physics if you will,” explained Jeffrey Hangst

ALPHA experiment spokesperson at CERN.

It is just one small step towards understanding one of the great mysteries of the universe – why does anything exist? If the Big Bang created antimatter and matter in equal quantities, they should, in theory, have cancelled each other out.