Powers of ten
1 antiprotons · 1.67 yg
The BASE experiment compares single antiprotons with protons in Penning traps. One particle is enough to measure the antiproton's magnetic moment to 1.5 parts per billion, and BASE has kept a reservoir of antiprotons trapped for 614 days.
92 antiprotons · 154 yg
On 24 March 2026 the BASE-STEP trap, loaded with 92 antiprotons, was driven 7.5 km around CERN's Meyrin site in 24 minutes and came back without losing one.
Source: ,
800 antiprotons · 1.34 zg
Antimatter, Inc. estimates one measurement of what is inside a sealed shipping container takes about eight hundred antiprotons.
3 × 10⁴ antiprotons · 50.2 zg
A five-sigma call on gold at 10 percent by weight, thirty centimetres deep, needs about thirty thousand antiprotons, by Antimatter, Inc.'s estimate.
2 × 10⁶ antiprotons · 3.35 ag
A full-face raster scan of a sealed container: about two million antiprotons.
3.2 × 10⁷ antiprotons · 53.5 ag
Every 109 seconds, while it runs, the Antiproton Decelerator and ELENA slow about thirty million antiprotons to 100 keV and share them among the experiments. The complex stopped on 31 August 2026 for a long shutdown and restarts in stages from 2028.
Source: ,
6.4 × 10⁷ antiprotons · 107 ag
In March 2026 GBAR stacked eighteen ELENA bunches into one Penning–Malmberg trap, reaching 6.4 × 10⁷ antiprotons in under 35 minutes, six times the previous record.
4 × 10⁸ antiprotons · 669 ag
One measurement point at 100 parts per million: about four hundred million antiprotons.
10⁹ antiprotons · 1.67 fg
Checking from orbit whether a satellite carries fissile material, one pulse at a time.
10¹¹ antiprotons · 167 fg
The whole mission, every pulse included, by Antimatter, Inc.'s sizing.
6 × 10¹¹ antiprotons · 1 pg
About six hundred billion antiprotons weigh one trillionth of a gram. This is the unit Antimatter, Inc. argues the industry should think in.
10¹² antiprotons · 1.67 pg
Two picograms: about fifty days of dedicated production, and at the cost per gram usually quoted in the press, roughly $130 of material.
6 × 10¹² antiprotons · 10 pg
Before the Tevatron closed in 2011, Fermilab's Recycler ring held up to six trillion antiprotons circulating at 8 GeV, about ten picograms. Nothing since has come close.
6 × 10¹⁴ antiprotons · 1 ng
Six hundred trillion antiprotons. Annihilated with matter, a nanogram would release about 180 kilojoules, enough to run a 10-watt bulb for five hours.
Computed from E = mc².
10¹⁶ antiprotons · 16.7 ng
Fermilab made about 10¹⁶ antiprotons between 1985 and 2011, roughly 17 nanograms. By Fermilab's own estimate that is more than 90 percent of all the nuclear antimatter humans have ever produced.
6 × 10¹⁷ antiprotons · 1 µg
Six hundred quadrillion antiprotons. Antimatter, Inc. puts a microgram at the bottom of the propulsion range, six orders of magnitude beyond every measurement application, and about 63,000 years of output at the rate the world can make them.
6 × 10²³ antiprotons · 1 g
A gram of antimatter meeting a gram of matter releases 1.8 × 10¹⁴ joules, about 43 kilotonnes of TNT. At CERN's production rate it would take about 65 billion years, nearly five times the age of the universe.
Computed from E = mc².
Popular accounts say all the antimatter ever made would not boil a cup of tea. That is true, and it describes grams. Measured against what each application actually needs, the useful range sits between a few hundred antiprotons and a few picograms.
The constraint is the rate of production and, above all, whether antiprotons survive long enough to be used somewhere other than the room where they were made. That is why storage and transport records matter, and why they are tracked on the records page.
Application sizes are estimates published by Antimatter, Inc.. Production time assumes the rate of CERN's Antiproton Decelerator and ELENA, about 3.2 × 10⁷ antiprotons every 109 seconds (source), running without a break. The complex is the world's only source of low-energy antiprotons; it stopped on 31 August 2026 for a long shutdown and restarts in stages from 2028 (CERN). Energies count both the antiproton and the proton it annihilates with.