( CNN ) -- Scientists have captured antimatter atoms for the first time , a breakthrough that could eventually help us to understand the nature and origins of the universe . Researchers at CERN , the Geneva-based particle physics laboratory , have managed to confine single antihydrogen atoms in a magnetic trap . This will allow them to conduct a more detailed study of antihydrogen , which will in turn allow scientists to compare matter and antimatter . Understanding antimatter is one of the biggest challenges facing science -- most theoretical physicists and cosmologists believe that at the Big Bang , when the universe was created , matter and antimatter were produced in equal amounts . However , as our world is made up of matter , antimatter seems to have disappeared . Understanding antimatter could shed light on why almost everything in the known universe consists of matter . Antimatter has been very difficult to handle because matter and antimatter do n't get on , destroying each other instantly on contact in a violent flash of energy . In a precursor to today 's experiment , in 2002 scientists at CERN produced antihydrogen atoms in large quantities , but they had an incredibly short lifespan -- just several milliseconds -- because the antihydrogen came into contact with the walls of their containers and the two annihilated each other . In this latest experiment the lifespan of the antihydrogen atoms was extended by using magnetic fields to trap them and thus prevent them from coming into contact with matter . The researchers created 38 antihydrogen atoms and held on to them for about a tenth of a second , which is long enough to study them says Professor Jeffrey Hangst , one of the team of CERN scientists who worked on the program . Hangst and his colleagues produced a magnet field which was strongest near the walls of the trap , falling to a minimum at the center , causing the atoms to collect there in a vacuum . `` We could have held them for much longer ... I am just full of joy and relief , it 's taken us five years to get here , this is a big milestone , '' Hangst told CNN . To trap just 38 atoms , they had to run the experiment 335 times , says Nature which published the report findings . Hangst added : `` This was ten thousand times more difficult than creating untrapped antihydrogen atoms . `` This will help us understand the structure of space and time . For reasons that no one yet understands , nature ruled out antimatter ... this inspires us to work that much harder to see if antimatter holds some secret . '' Malcolm Longair , professor of natural philosophy at Cambridge University , told CNN that CERN 's results were a considerable achievement . `` At the Big Bang we believe the temperatures were very very high and we understand in theory why antimatter disappeared but there is no physical theory to back it up . '' Antimatter was first predicted in 1931 by the British physicist Paul Dirac , who theorized that antimatter is ordinary matter in reverse . CERN 's next ambition is to create a beam of antimatter which they hope will allow them to unpeel more of the mysteries surrounding it .
Antihydrogen atoms were trapped in a magnetic field . The magnet was strong enough to hold the antiprotons together, but not so strong that they would fly apart when hit by an electron beam or other particle ( like electrons ). `` It 's taken us five years to get here , '' says Professor Jeffrey Hangst . CERN 's next ambition is to create a beam of antimatter .