Antimatter is kind of the ‘evil twin’ of regular matter – the main difference is that a particle and its antiparticle have the opposite charge. It sounds simple, but the ramifications are huge. If antimatter particles touch those of normal matter, even air, they annihilate each other in a burst of energy.

To store the stuff long enough to study it, antimatter needs to be suspended in an electromagnetic field to keep it from touching the sides. The BASE experiment does just this, and it can store antimatter particles for well over a year. However, there are only so many experiments that can be done on-site.