Fine Structure

Researchers at CERNs ALPHA experiment have managed to trap a number of antihydrogen atoms (that is, an antiproton and positron) for an unheard of amount of time. 170ms may not sound like a long time to you, but it's quite a bit of time in the world of the very very small.

Though antimatter is mostly used as doomsday devices in popular culture, the scientific community sees the mysteries of antimatter as a much deeper question about how we exist. In short, the beginning of the universe should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter and yet almost everything we see in the universe is just matter. Justifiably, we wouldn't exist in a universe with too much more antimatter (probably something to do with the catastrophic annihilation that occurs when matter meets antimatter - you're probably familiar with this) so this is a very fundamental question.

Heavy stuff aside, trapping and holding antimatter might be a great source of power or propulsion in the future. This is a very early step towards those things but quite a big one for us.