Credit: Rüdiger Wölk/ Wikimedia

PARIS: Lab-grown tuberculosis (TB) bacteria has been killed with good old Vitamin C – an “unexpected” discovery scientists hope will lead to better, cheaper drugs.

A team from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York made the accidental find while researching how TB bacteria become resistant to the TB drug isoniazid.

The researchers added isoniazid and a “reducing agent” known as cysteine to the TB in a test tube, expecting the bacteria to develop drug resistance.

Instead, the team “ended up killing off the culture”, according to the study’s senior author William Jacobs, who said the result was “totally unexpected”.

Reducing agents chemically reduce other substances.

“Almost like the dream drug”

The team then replaced the cysteine in the experiment with another reducing agent – Vitamin C.

It, too, killed the bacteria.

“I was in disbelief,” said Jacobs of the outcome published in the journal Nature Communications.

“Even more surprisingly… when we left out the TB drug isoniazid and just had Vitamin C alone, we discovered that Vitamin C kills tuberculosis.”

The team next tested the vitamin on drug resistant strains of TB, with the same outcome.

In the lab tests, the bacteria never developed resistance to Vitamin C – “almost like the dream drug”, Jacobs said in a video released by the college.

He stressed the effect had only been demonstrated in a test tube so far, and “we don’t know if it will work in humans”, or which dose might be useful.

“But in fact before this study we wouldn’t have even thought about trying this study in humans.”

In March, disease experts warned of a “very real” risk of an untreatable TB strain emerging as more and more people develop drug resistance.

TB: a global health emergency

In 2011, there were believed to be some 12 million TB cases in total – 630,000 of them of the multi-drug resistant (MDR) variety which does not respond to the most potent drugs – isoniazid and rifampin.

Extensively drug resistant (XDR) TB, does not respond to an even wider range of drugs.

TB was declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organisation (WHO) 20 years ago, but remains a leading cause of death by an infectious disease despite a 41 % drop in the death rate from 1990 to 2011.

In 2011, 8.7 million people fell ill with TB and 1.4 million died, said the WHO.

Over 95 % of TB deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, and it is a leading killer of people with HIV.

An airborne disease of the lungs, tuberculosis is usually treatable with a six-month course of antibiotics.

Resistance to TB drugs develops when treatment fails to kill the bacteria that causes it – either because the patient fails to follow their prescribed dosages or the drug doesn’t work.

It can also be contracted through rare forms of the disease that are directly transmissible from person to person.

MDR TB in the United States can cost as much as $250,000 (200,000 euros) per patient to treat.

XDR TB requires about two years of treatment with even more expensive drugs that cause side-effects and offer no guarantee of a cure.

The authors of the new study urged further research into the potential uses of Vitamin C in TB treatment, stressing it was “inexpensive, widely available and very safe to use.”

“This would be a great study to consider because we have strains of tuberculosis that we don’t have drugs for, and I know in the laboratory that we can kill those strains with Vitamin C,” said Jacobs.

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A Soyuz-2.1b rocket, carrying a Bion-M capsule is seen on the launch pad at Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome, 18 April 2013. Credit: AFP

MOSCOW:  A number of mice and eight gerbils sent into space in a Russian capsule destined to find out how well organisms can withstand extended flights perished during their journey, scientists said as the month-long mission touched back down on Earth.

Most of the 45 mice sent into orbit – along with the gerbils and 15 newts – died on the mission, which nevertheless returned with data that scientists hope will pave the way for a manned flight to Mars.

The animals on board the Bion-M craft died because of equipment failure or due to the stresses of space, scientists said.

The craft itself landed softly early on Sunday with the help of a special parachute system in the Orenburg region about 1,200 kilometres (750 miles) southeast of Moscow. It was also carrying snails, some plants and microflora.

“This is the first time that animals have been put in space on their own for so long,” Vladimir Sychov of the Russian Academy of Sciences announced upon the peculiar crew’s return to Earth.

But at the end of the experiment, “less than half of the mice made it – but that was to be expected,” Sychov told Russian news agencies. “Unfortunately, because of equipment failure, we lost all the gerbils.”

The TsSKB-Progress space research centre’s department head, Valery Abrashkin, said on the day the mission took off in April that the study was aimed at determining how bodies adapt to weightlessness “so that our organisms survive extended flights”.

The space adventure has been widely praised by Russian state media as a unique experiment that no other country has yet pulled off. Russia last sent mice into space in 2007 for a much shorter duration of 12 days.

France’s Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) space centre said 15 of the 45 mice came from a French research lab that is cooperating with the study.

CNES life science department head Guillemette Gauquelin-Koch said the project took “a further decisive step in human adaptation to weightlessness”.

Scientists from both countries said the animals were used as it was impossible to conduct the experiment on the humans who are currently operating the International Space Station (ISS).

They added that the mice would have posed a health risk if simply placed on board the ISS for a month.

The experiment’s designers said the tests primarily focused on how microgravity impacts the skeletal and nervous systems as well as organisms’ muscles and hearts.

The animals were stored inside five special containers that automatically opened after reaching orbit and closed once it was time to return.

Also on board were over two dozen measuring devices and other scientific objects that measured everything from heart rates and blood pressure to radiation levels.

The capsule spun 575 kilometres (357 miles) above Earth.

Officials at France’s CNES said a new mission with microorganisms may be launched by Russia next year.

Russia has long set its sights on Mars and is now targeting 2030 as the year in which it could begin creating a base on the Moon for flights to the Red Planet.

But recent problems with its once-vaunted space programme – including the embarrassing failure of a research satellite that Moscow tried sending up to one of Mars’s moons last year – have threatened Russia’s future exploration efforts.

Russia’s trials and tribulations are watched closely by other space-faring nations because the Soyuz rocket on which the animals went up represents the world’s only manned link to the constantly staffed ISS.

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Ian Croser, one of seven Clunies Ross award recipients. Credit: Dave Hase

SYDNEY: Australian visionaries who between them contributed to the broadband network, tuberculosis eradication and military radar communication, were recognised last night at the Clunies Ross Awards.

The seven recipients join the prestigious ranks of previous Clunies Ross Award winners, including plastic surgeon Fiona Wood who invented a ‘spray-on’ skin for burns victims.

Presented by the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE), the awards acknowledge innovations and advancements in science and technology that have benefited Australia economically and socially.

The awards are named in honour of Sir Ian Clunies Ross. Born in 1899 in NSW, Australia, he was a leading scientific figure, best known for his pioneering work in veterinary science, including developing an immunisation for dogs against an Australian paralysis tick, and overseeing the release of myxomatosis for rabbit population control.

Meet this year’s winners:

Ian Croser: on Australia’s radar

A former Royal Australian Navy Officer, Croser developed an advanced anti-missile defence radar array for modern war ships capable of launching counterstrikes against multiple targets at a faster speed than a human operator. Croser is now the technical director and co-founder of CEA Technologies, which specialises in the design and development of radars and sensors, and communication and combat systems. As well as improving border security for the country, the innovation has drawn interest internationally as a military technology export.

Anthony Radford, James Rothel, Paul Wood and Stephen Jones: tuberculosis eradication

This group of former researchers from Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO, played a fundamental role in the successful eradication of bovine tuberculosis in Australia. They also contributed to the development of technology that enabled tuberculosis to be diagnosed more rapidly (within 24 hours) and with greater accuracy than the Mantoux skin test, currently the predominate method for screening for tuberculosis worldwide. The technology has since been licensed and commercialised for diagnosis in cattle, deer, primates and humans.

Simon Poole and Steven Frisken: fibre optic pioneers

Simon Poole and Steven Frisken are entrepreneurs in optical communications and instrumentation.

Founders of Egana (now Finisar Australia), they created one of the leading manufacturers of optical communication technologies, which are fundamental to networks such as Australia’s National Broadband Network.

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Four images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory of an X3.2-class flare from late at night on May 13, 2013.
Credit: NASA/SDO

WASHINGTON: The Sun has unleashed four potent solar flares this week, marking the most intense activity yet this year and causing limited interruptions to high-frequency radio communications.

One of them was classified as an X3.2 flare, with X-class flares being the most intense type, NASA reported.

“This is the strongest X-class flare of 2013 so far, surpassing in strength the two X-class flares that occurred earlier in the 24-hour period,” the U.S. space agency said of the flare that peaked at 0111 GMT Tuesday.

A fourth X-class flare peaked at 0148 GMT on Wednesday, NASA said.

Measuring at X1.2, it caused a temporary radio blackout that has since subsided, and was categorised as “strong,” or R3 on a scale of 1 to 5 on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s space weather scales.

The latest flares began on May 13 and have sent off bursts of radiation from the Sun, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). The strongest traveled particularly fast, at a speed of approximately 1,400 miles (2,253 kilometres) per second, NASA said.

The CMEs have so far not been directed at the Earth, but may impact satellites.

NASA said the CMEs would produce a merged cloud of solar material that “may give a glancing blow to the STEREO-B and Epoxi spacecraft,” which are space-based observatories orbiting Earth to monitor solar storms and comets.

“Their mission operators have been notified. If warranted, operators can put spacecraft into safe mode to protect the instruments from solar material,” the U.S. space agency said.

Experts say that a rise in solar activity is common right now because the Sun is in a phase of its 11-year activity cycle that is nearing the solar maximum, expected in 2013. According to space weather experts at NOAA, more strong solar flares may be expected in the coming days.

Although CMEs send off potent radiation, Earth is protected by its magnetic field.

Solar activity can temporarily disrupt GPS signals and communications satellites, but most people will not notice any effects in their daily lives.

The first X-class flare of this solar cycle occurred in February 2011. The largest so far of the current cycle was documented as an X6.9 in August 2011.

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“A significant step” towards regenerative medicine.
Credit: iStockphoto

WASHINGTON: U.S. researchers have reported a breakthrough in stem cell research, describing how they turned human skin cells into embyronic stem cells for the first time.

The method described by Oregon Health and Science University scientists in the journal Cell, would not likely be able to create human clones, said Shoukhrat Mitalipov, senior scientist at the Oregon National Primate Research Centre.

But it is an important step in research because it does not require the use of embryos in creating the type of stem cell capable of transforming into any other type of cell in the body.

The technique involves transplanting an individual’s DNA into an egg cell that has been stripped of genetic material, a variation of a method called somatic cell nuclear transfer.

“A thorough examination of the stem cells derived through this technique demonstrated their ability to convert just like normal embryonic stem cells, into several different cell types, including nerve cells, liver cells and heart cells,” said Mitalipov.

He added that since the reprogrammed cells use genetic material from the patient, there is no concern about trransplant rejection.

“While there is much work to be done in developing safe and effective stem cell treatments, we believe this is a significant step forward in developing the cells that could be used in regenerative medicine,” Mitalipov said.

Years of research on monkey cells using the same technique have not successfully produced any monkey clones.

Since the human cells used in the study appeared even more fragile, researchers said it was unlikely that clones could be made.

“While nuclear transfer breakthroughs often lead to a public discussion about the ethics of human cloning, this is not our focus, nor do we believe our findings might be used by others to advance the possibility of human reproductive cloning,” they said.

Scientists hope that stem cell research will offer new pathways in the fight against Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injuries and blindness.

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A species of Shrub frog from Vietnam, called Gracixalus quangi. Amphibians species are considered most at risk from climate change. Credit: Jodi J. L. Rowley

PARIS: More than half of common species of plants and a third of animal species are likely to see their living space halved by 2080 on current trends of carbon emissions, according to a new climate study.

Output of man-made greenhouse gases is putting Earth on track for four degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming by 2100 compared with the pre-industrial 18th century, the study said. The unprecedented speed of warming will be a shock for many species, as it will badly affect the climatic range in which they can live, it warned.

Investigators from Britain’s University of East Anglia looked at 48,786 species and measured how their range would be affected according to models of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Living space halved by 2080

Fifty-five percent of plants and 35% of animals could see their living space halved by 2080 at current emissions growth for CO2, they found. The figures take into account the species’ ability to migrate into habitat that may open up as a result of warming.

The species most at risk are amphibians, as well as plants and reptiles, and regions that would lose most are Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, the Amazon and Australia, the paper said.

Lead researcher Rachel Warren said the estimates “are probably conservative” as they were based only on the impact of rising global temperatures. Other symptoms of climate change – storms, droughts, floods and pests, for instance – would amplify the problem.

“Animals in particular may decline more as our predictions will be compounded by a loss of food from plants,” Warren said in a press release.

“There will also be a knock-on effect for humans because these species are important for things like water and air purification, flood control, nutrient cycling and eco-tourism.”

A ray of light

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, said there was a ray of light. If carbon emissions peak in 2016 – and decline by three to four percent annually thereafter – this would limit 2100 warming to 2°C (3.6°F), avoiding around 60% of the projected impact from business-as-usual emissions.

But if the peak is delayed until 2021, emissions would have fall yearly by six percent to achieve 2°C (3.6°F) warming, which would need a costlier effort to rein in energy use. Alternatively, if emissions peak by 2030 and then are reduced at five percent annually to limit warming to around 2.8°C (5°F), the loss of climatic range would be reduced by 40% compared with business-as usual.

U.N. members have adopted the 2°C target in world climate talks, which aim to conclude a new treaty on carbon emissions by 2015 and have it ratified by 2020.

But the negotiations have been making poor progress, and the yearly rise in emissions, driven especially by the burning of coal in big developing countries, has led many scientists to conclude that warming of 3–4°C (5.4–7.2°F) is probable by century’s end.

The new study says that loss of climate range would be bound to boost the risk of species extinction.

The Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has estimated that 20–30% of species would be at increasingly high risk of extinction if warming exceeds 2–3°C (3.6-5.4°F) above pre-industrial levels.

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Reconstruction of Acrotholus audeti, an 85 million year old dome-headed dinosaur, with the turtle Neurankylus lithographicus in the foreground. Credit: Julius Csotonyi

PARIS: The discovery of a new thick-skulled dinosaur the size of a large dog may challenge our image of a pre-historic Earth dominated by supersized lizards, a study said.

The planet may, in fact, have been inhabited by many more types of small dinosaur than widely thought, a group of researchers wrote in the journal Nature Communications.

“It would have been a world filled with a diversity of dinosaur life, both large and small,” study co-author David Evans of the Royal Ontario Museum’s natural history department said of the results.

When monsters prevailed

Today, Earth is dominated by small-bodied animals, including mammals and reptiles.

But dinosaur fossil finds have painted a picture of a very different world during the Mesozoic era, from about 250 to 65 million years ago, in which monster-sized creatures prevailed.

Scientists disagree on whether this meant the bigger animals were simply more numerous, or that their remains have been better preserved.

Now, evidence for the latter theory has been found in fossilised skull fragments discovered in the Milk River Formation of southern Alberta, Canada.

Head-butting contests

The remains are from a small, plant-eating dinosaur that strode the Earth hunched on two muscled hind legs some 85 million years ago.

About 1.8 metres (six feet) from nose to tail and weighing in at 40 kilograms (88 pounds), the animal had a ridge of solid bone more than 10 centimetres (four inches) thick on the top of the skull – possibly used in head-butting contests.

The feature gave rise to its name: Acrotholus audeti after the Greek for “high dome”.

Acrotholus is the oldest species from a group of thick-skulled dinosaurs known as pachycephalosaurs in North America, and possibly the world, the researchers wrote.

From studying the new species’ place in the pachycephalosaur family tree, the team concluded there was a lot yet to be discovered about diversity in this and other groups of small dinosaur – classified as animals weighing less than 100 kilograms (220 pounds) each.

Thick skulls preserved well

“When we look back at the Age of Dinosaurs, it’s easy to focus on the big animals like T. rex,” said Evans.

“But there is a growing body of evidence that the landscape would have been filled with small dinosaurs as well.”

More is known about pachycephalosaurs than many other small dinosaur groups, mainly because their thick skulls were better able to resist the ravages of the elements and time.

The rest of their skeletons, like those of most small dinosaurs, were much more easily weathered or chewed up by predators before they could be turned into fossils.

“We can predict that many new small dinosaurs species like Acrotholus are waiting to be discovered by researchers willing to sort through the many small bones that they pick up in the field,” said Michael Ryan of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

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Composite image of Earth and Mars created to show the relative sizes of the two planets. Credit: NASA / JPL

WASHINGTON: NASA and private sector experts now agree that a man or woman could be sent on a mission to Mars over the next 20 years, despite huge challenges.

The biggest names in space exploration, among them top officials from the U.S. space agency and Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, will discuss the latest projects at a three-day conference starting May 6 in the U.S. capital.

Renewed interest in the red planet has triggered the launch of several initiatives in recent months, including one proposing a simple one-way trip to cut costs.

75% want NASA budget doubled

The American public also favours sending astronauts to Mars, according to a survey by non-profit group Explore Mars and aerospace giant Boeing.

The poll in March of more than a thousand people published found that 71 % of Americans expect that humans will land on Mars by 2033.

Seventy-five percent say NASA’s budget should be doubled to 1 % of the federal budget to fund a mission to Mars and other initiatives.

NASA receives only 0.5 % of the U.S. federal budget, compared to 4 % during the Apollo project to land on the Moon in the 1960s.

The U.S. space agency’s chief Charles Bolden has stressed that “a human mission to Mars is a priority.”

But the U.S. financial crisis is a major obstacle to such a project.

“Money, not miracles”

“If we started today, it’s possible to land on Mars in 20 years,” said G. Scott Hubbard of Stanford University, in California, USA.

“It doesn’t require miracles, it requires money and a plan to address the technological engineering challenges,” added Hubbard, who served as NASA’s first Mars program director and successfully restructured the entire Mars program in the wake of mission failures.

Placing a mass of 30-40 tonnes – the amount estimated to be necessary to make a habitat on the red planet – would be one of the greatest challenges, along with the well-known problem of carrying or producing enough fuel to get back, Hubbard stressed.

The Curiosity rover took a nail-biting seven minutes in August 2012 to make its descent on Mars. But it only weighed one tonne.

The $2.5 billion Curiosity mission, which is set to last at least two years, aims to study the Martian environment and to hunt for evidence of water in preparation for a possible future manned mission.

Astronaut health a consideration

Robotic missions will therefore be necessary to prove the system works before scientists can even contemplate sending humans aboard.

NASA is developing a Space Launch System and the Orion capsule for distant space exploration.

Hubbard said a nuclear engine should be developed for any vehicle headed to Mars because it would provide a continuous thrust and thus reduce travel time by about three months, as well as reduce the risk of radiation.

The distance between Earth and Mars varies between 35 million and 250 million miles (56 million and 400 million kilometers), depending on the planets’ position.

In addition to the technological challenges, the negative impact of long space journeys on the human body are not yet well known, especially with respect to cosmic radiation.

“Space radiation exposure is certainly a human risk we need to address and understand,” said Stephen Davison, manager of NASA’s Space Biology and Physical Sciences Program at Johnson Space Centre where astronauts are trained.

Davison said it was important to understand “both the cancer risk to our crew members in more detail and also the effects on the central nervous system.”

He added that more than half of crew members at the International Space Centre have experienced some degree of change in their vision, and also have experienced intra-cranial pressure.

Other physiological changes, such as reduced bone density and muscle loss, can be mitigated by exercise.

The third major challenge is a psychological one, for isolated astronauts who spend long periods of time confined in cramped spaces.

Davison said scientists need a “minimum” of 10 years to complete research about the trip’s impact on the human body before going to Mars.

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Crossley’s dwarf lemur from Tsinjoarivo, Madagascar, near its winter hibernation spot. Credit: M. Blanco

PARIS: The mystery of the Madagascar dwarf lemur’s winter disappearance has been revealed: it burrows deep into the soil, curled up for a months-long sleep, scientists were astonished to find.

The discovery, announced in a study published in Nature Scientific Reports, makes the island country’s eastern dwarf lemurs the only primates in the world known to hibernate underground.

The fat-tailed lemur, a cousin from the slightly warmer, drier forests of western Madagascar, was already known to hibernate in tree holes for about seven months of the year.

“They had to go somewhere…”

Researchers long suspected the eastern lemurs may be doing the same, but could never find them.

“You don’t see them, trap them or find them during the dry season (winter time) while walking the forests at night,” study co-author Marina Blanco of Germany’s Hamburg University said.

“They had to go somewhere…”

And so the team fitted radio-transmitter collars on 12 lemurs from two eastern species in summer, and waited.

The species – Sibree’s dwarf lemur and Crossley’s dwarf lemur – live in the forest of Tsinjoarivo.

Setting out in winter with signal trackers, the team fully expected to find the lemurs sleeping in tree holes.

“We started to dig … and found a furry ball”

“We were tracking the collar’s signal and pointing our antenna up in the air, towards the tip of a tree. But the signal was coming from the ground, so we thought the animal had lost the collar,” said Blanco.

“We looked around and didn’t see anything so we started to dig up the area and found a furry ball, the dwarf lemur was curled up and cold to the touch, still wearing its collar.”

The tiny bundles weighed about 250 gram (nine ounces) to 350 gram (12 ounces) depending on which species they belonged to.

They hibernated for anything from three to six months buried 10 to 40 centimetres (4 – 16 inches) under a spongy layer of tree roots, soil and decaying plant matter.

Rare primates hibernation

It is uncommon for primates to hibernate – in fact the western fat-tailed lemur was previously the only primate known to do so.

It is also rare behaviour for animals in tropical regions – residents of colder climes like polar bears, hedgehogs or squirrels are usually the ones who find it necessary to hide out from winter.

During hibernation, the metabolism slows down and the core body temperature reaches ambient levels – meaning the body has to work less hard to stay alive.

During the Madagascar winter, lemurs are exposed to drastic daily temperature fluctuations of as much as 30 degrees Celsius (54 degrees Fahrenheit).

In the highland rainforests, ambient temperatures can drop to between zero and five degrees C in winter – cold for animals used to summer averages in the 30s.

In retrospect, the team wrote, underground hibernation in the tropics made sense as it provides better insulation than tree holes or nests.

Sibree’s dwarf lemur is retrieved from underground hibernaculum at Tsinjoarivo forest. Credit: J.F. Ranaivoarisoa

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Physicist working on the Alpha experiment based at CERN in Switzerland, where scientists are aiming to manufacture, trap and study antihydrogen. Credit: CERN

PARIS: A new experiment has been devised that could answer one of particle physics’ greatest questions: do the same laws of gravity apply to antimatter?

Though antimatter – the obscure counterpart of matter as we know it – is thought to have existed in equal quantities to matter at the moment of the Big Bang some 14 billion years ago, it is rare today and scientists who wish to study antimatter particles have to manufacture them.

In the Universe, antimatter particles are thought to exist mainly around black holes and in cosmic rays.

For more than 50 years, scientists have debated whether gravity would attract or repel antimatter particles – whether they would fall down like conventional matter or ‘up’ due to a kind of antigravity. While the question remains unsolved for now, a team of scientists wrote in the journal Nature Communications they had developed the beginnings of a test that should lead to a conclusive answer.

First steps to answering 50 year-old question

“This is the first word, not the last,” said Joel Fajans, a member of the research team at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research’s (CERN) Alpha experiment. “We’ve taken the first steps toward a direct experimental test of questions physicists and non-physicists have been wondering about for more than 50 years.”

Antimatter particles have opposite properties to ordinary matter particles, including their electric charge. A positively-charged positron, for example, is the antiparticle equivalent of the negatively-charged electron. When an opposing pair meets, particles and anti-particles annihilate each other in a flash of energy, which means that if an even balance had continued to persist after the Big Bang, the Universe would never have come into being.

But how this imbalance came about is a great riddle for particle physics. Scientists also scratch their heads over whether antimatter would respond in the same way as matter to gravity, or whether it would move in an different direction at a different speed. Some believe the fact the Universe is comprised almost entirely of matter could be explained if antimatter did indeed ‘fall’ up. But others assume it would behave the same as matter in reaction to gravity. No proof exists for either theory.

“Maybe we will be surprised”

“We certainly expect antimatter to fall down, but just maybe we will be surprised,” said Fajans, a University of California physics professor. “In the unlikely event that antimatter falls upwards, we’d have to fundamentally revise our view of physics and rethink how the universe works.”

The Alpha team reported the first direct measurements, though experimental and within a very wide range, of gravity’s effect on antimatter in free fall. The experiment works on manufacturing and trapping antihydrogen atoms – the antimatter counterparts of the simplest atom, hydrogen. The atoms are placed in a magnetic trap which is then switched off, allowing them to “fall out” and hit the trap walls in flashes of energy.

The researchers realised that by analysing where the atoms hit, and with what velocity, they could determine if gravity acted on antihydrogen differently than on hydrogen. If antimatter acted the same as matter, the rate of its gravitational mass to inertial mass would be the same: 1 – less than this and the antimatter would be falling upwards.

Gravitational mass is determined by a body’s response to gravity, while inertial mass measures to its resistance to acceleration. From its early measurements, the team was able to place outer limits on the ratio of plus 110 on the one side and minus 65 on the other – a margin that will be refined with more accurate tools and methods.

The experiment is being upgraded, and more precise data should become available when it reopens next year, said a statement.

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