As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?
I always wanted to be a scientist. I grew up during the space race, and I clearly remember thinking that being an astronaut would be cool, but that being a scientist would be cooler.
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Explain your work in one easy paragraph.
I work with antimatter, which is this weird, mirror opposite to “normal” matter. It is a huge puzzle, because we think matter and antimatter existed in equal quantities just after the big bang, but we can’t explain why only matter survived. My ALPHA experiment is looking at the properties of the simplest anti-atom, antihydrogen, to see if there may be some small, overlooked difference between matter and antimatter.
Why did you choose this field?
I have always worked with antimatter. I guess I like a challenge. Where’s the fun in getting your atoms out of a gas bottle that anyone can buy?
Did you have to overcome any particular challenges to get where you are today?
Well, everything about antimatter is challenging. You have to produce antiprotons in high-energy collisions and then slow them down and stop them to make antihydrogen. Even then, you only get a handful of atoms that you have to keep in an ultra-high vacuum away from normal matter. I have been told by colleagues at every step of the way that all this is impossible, but here we are.
What’s the most exciting thing you’ve worked on in your career?
Antimatter has been my entire career, and it has always been exciting, if a bit daunting. It is cool to work on something that fascinates people and shows up regularly in science fiction. I like to be the first to see something new, and that’s the case with everything we measure.
CERN and Mont Blanc: Explore particle physics and glaciers in Switzerland on a Â鶹´«Ă˝ Discovery Tour
What achievement are you most proud of?
There are two. In the ATHENA collaboration, we succeeded in producing the first low-energy atoms of antihydrogen in 2002. The second was the first confinement of antihydrogen by ALPHA in 2010. I started ALPHA in 2005 to get to this, and everything we do today is based on that result.
Which discovery or achievement do you wish you’d made yourself?
Paul Dirac’s insight, predicting the existence of antimatter, is right up there – one of the truly great intellectual leaps in the history of science.
If you could have a conversation with any scientist, living or dead, who would it be?
Could I exchange this to bring back John Bonham, so I could go to a Led Zeppelin concert?
If you could send a message back to yourself as a kid, what would you say?
Get your atoms from a gas bottle.
Do you have an unexpected hobby, and if so, please will you tell us about it?
I play guitar in a rock band. We are three CERN physicists and a singer from Transylvania. The name of the band is Diracula. I also build my own guitars. This is easier than making antihydrogen.
What’s the best thing you’ve read or seen in the past 12 months?
I really enjoyed Roger Waters’s movie Us + Them, which was only shown for one day in Geneva. I am a huge Pink Floyd fan.
How useful will your skills be after the apocalypse?
I am much more likely to be blamed for the apocalypse… Seriously, though, experimental physicists can build or repair pretty much anything, and we are great scavengers of equipment. And I was kidding, we could never make enough antimatter to be dangerous to anything other than our own sanity.
OK, one last thing: tell us something that will blow our minds…
I’ll tell you four things. Roger Waters visited ALPHA this year. We had a beer. He autographed my guitar. If I send him an email, he answers.
Jeffrey Hangst is in Geneva and professor of physics at Aarhus University in Denmark