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The ALPHA collaboration at CERN in Geneva has scored another coup on the antimatter front by performing the first-ever spectroscopic measurements of the internal state of the antihydrogen atom. Their results are reported in a forthcoming issue of Nature and are now online.

AlphaDog If Boston Dynamics' BigDog quadruped robot gives you the willies with its amazingly animal-like skills at tromping across difficult land at speed, then don't watch the video of BD's newest iteration of its military assistant robot, AlphaDog. [youtube SSbZrQp-HOk] BigDog was really the development prototype for AlphaDog, suffering from an enormously noisy engine and fairly limited operating range and payload powers. AlphaDog, on the other hand, is closer to a production dog droid that could actually accompany troops on the battlefield: It's quieter, can carry 400 pounds and run 20 miles without needing more gas, versus BigDog's 340 pounds and 12-mile range.

By successfully confining atoms of antihydrogen for an unprecedented 1,000 seconds, an international team of researchers called the ALPHA Collaboration has taken a step towards resolving one of the grand challenges of modern physics: explaining why the Universe is made almost entirely of matter, when matter and antimatter are symmetric, with identical mass, spin and other properties. The achievement is remarkable because antimatter instantly disappears on contact with regular matter such that confining antimatter requires the use of exotic technology.

(PhysOrg.com) -- The largest and most complex scientific instrument yet to be fitted to the International Space Station was installed today. Taken into space by the Space Shuttle, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer will sift ten thousand cosmic-ray hits every minute, looking for nature’s best-kept particle secrets.

The world’s most advanced cosmic-ray detector took 16 years and $2 billion to build, and not long ago it looked as though it would wind up mothballed in some warehouse.

A 12-minute NASA video with scientist interviews gives an overview of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) project: [More]

(PhysOrg.com) -- The AMS particle detector will take off on 29 April 2011 at 21.47 CEST onboard the very last mission of the space Shuttle Endeavour.