According to a new report, a team of scientists have succeeded in capturing anti-hydrogen particles for 1,000 seconds before annihilation.

The report published in Nature Physics will allow scientists to compare ordinary matter with antimatter. The team from CERN said that the lifespan of particles improved by four orders of magnitude over previous work.

The particles reach a low-energy state at some point allowing their comparison with ordinary hydrogen particles. The anti-matter particles are created in high-energy environments and they appear in a fragile, high energy state, which makes it difficult capture them.

The atoms cannot be trapped in electrical fields and thus the team at CERN trapped the antimatter atoms using superconducting magnets.