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Stefan Ulmer

Stefan Ulmer

Spokesperson and founder of the BASE experiment at CERN

Appears in 2 stories

Notable Quotes

"The particles returned... so this was a success." — after the 10-kilometre drive

"Something humanity has never done before — it is historic."

"The motivation behind these experiments is to compare matter and antimatter with extremely high accuracy and watch for differences which we might have not seen yet."

Stories

CERN transports antimatter by truck for the first time in history

New Capabilities

Led the first antimatter transport; developing longer-range capability

Every antiproton ever studied has been measured in the same building where it was made — CERN's antimatter factory outside Geneva, the only facility on Earth that can produce and store them. On March 24, 2026, physicists loaded 92 antiprotons into a one-tonne portable trap, craned it onto a truck, and drove 10 kilometres around the laboratory site. Roughly 91 survived. It is the first time antimatter has been transported outside its birthplace.

Updated Mar 24

The quest to trap antimatter

New Capabilities

Leading antimatter research at CERN and RIKEN

CERN's BASE collaboration kept a single antiproton oscillating between quantum states for 50 seconds—long enough to create the world's first antimatter qubit. The breakthrough, published in Nature in July 2025, opens the door to measuring antiproton properties with 10 to 100 times more precision than before. It's not about building quantum computers. It's about answering why the universe exists at all.

Updated Jan 7