PHYSICISTS PRODUCE FIRST COMPLETE ATOMS OF ANTIMATTER

                             By Malcolm W. Browne

                                NEW YORK TIMES

	Physicists, at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, announced
Thursday (January 4, 1996), that they had created, for 40 billionths of a
second, the first complete atoms of antimatter ever made by human beings or
seen in nature.

	In an anti-atom, the antimatter equivalent of an ordinary atom, the
electrical charges, of all of the components of the atom, are reversed.  While
an ordinary, matter atom has a positively charged proton nucleus, with one, or
more, negatively charged negatively charged electrons orbiting it, the
antimatter atom has a negatively proton charged nucleus, with positively
charged orbiting electrons.

	Unless an antimatter atom is prevented from coming into contact with an
ordinary, matter atom, the two atoms, if they meet, annihilate each other,
with a corresponding flash of released energy.  As with nuclear fission, the
released masses, if rejoined, never equal the weight, or mass, of the
original, since part of the fission, or annihilation process, involves
conversion of part of the mass of the whole unit into energy, hence the power
of an atomic explosion or the meeting of matter and antimatter atoms.

	This might explain the absence of antimatter atoms in our universe, since
they have long since been exterminate by the over abundence of matter atoms.

	Anti-protons are routinely manufactured in physics laboratories, as are
anti-electrons, also called positrons.  But, to date, no one had ever
succeeded in nudging a positron into orbit around an anti-proton, making an
atom of antimatter.  The announcement, by the European laboratory located near
Geneva, establishes that this bizarre kind of atom can actually exist.

	Scientists hope, one day, to make comparative measurements of the
properties of atoms and anti-atoms in terms of their gravitational attraction,
their interactions with light, and other features.  Subtle differences,
between atoms and their antimatter counterparts, may shed light on the origin,
and evolution, of the universe and to help solve the puzzle as to why we are
made of matter, instead of antimatter.

	Although many physicists discount the idea that anti-hydrogen might one
day be developed as a very high potency fuel for instellar rockets or super
bombs, some scientists have not abandoned the dream of exploiting antimatter
as a propellant.  When combined with ordinary matter, antimatter converts mass
to energy far more efficiently than a nuclear bomb.

	Dr. Walter Oelert, of the Juelich Institute for Nuclear Physics Research
in Germany, and his German and Italian colleagues, reported that they have
created 11 atoms of anti-hydrogen during a three week period, during September
of 1995, but withheld the news until they, and indenpendent experts, had
thoroughly checked their results, which will be published in a forthcoming
issue of the Journal of Physical Review B.

	"We're absolutely sure now," said Dr. Oelert, in an interview, "and the
experiment shows, without a doubt, that anti-hydrogen can exist.  No one
doubted it, but it is nice to have the experimental proof."

	The anti-hydrogen atoms, created in the experiment, were traveling at
nearly the speed of light and survived for about 40 billionths of a second
before colliding with atoms of ordinary matter and annihilating themselves. 
But, from the patten, and types of debris left of photographic plates that were
created by these collisions, the scientists were able to establish the identity
of the projectiles as anti-hydrogen atoms.