CERN's Entire Antimatter Haul Would Barely Tap a Phone

Science fiction loves antimatter bombs, but the real stockpile is almost comically tiny. CERN estimates that the most antihydrogen it could imagine making in a single year — even if every atom were trapped and forced to annihilate at once — would release only a few thousandths of a joule. The lab’s own comparison: that is roughly the energy of gently tapping a phone screen with a finger.

The reason is brutal arithmetic. Antiprotons are made a handful at a time and are wildly hard to capture and store.

Reaching a single gram of antimatter at present rates would take on the order of 100 billion years — longer than the universe has existed.

Decades of effort have barely moved the needle. According to Symmetry, every antiproton ever made at Fermilab’s Tevatron amounts to about 15 nanograms, those at CERN to roughly 1 nanogram, and positrons at DESY to about 2 nanograms. Producing one full gram would demand roughly 25 million billion kilowatt-hours — making antimatter, by far, the most expensive stuff on Earth.