(CNN) -- Scientists have captured antimatter atoms for the first time, a breakthrough that could eventually help us to understand the nature and origins of the universe. Researchers at CERN, the Geneva-based particle physics laboratory, have managed to confine single antihydrogen atoms in a magnetic trap. This will allow them to conduct a more detailed study of antihydrogen, which will in turn allow scientists to compare matter and antimatter. Understanding antimatter is one of the biggest challenges facing science -- most theoretical physicists and cosmologists believe that at the Big Bang, when the universe was created, matter and antimatter were produced in equal amounts.
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Antihydrogen atoms were trapped in a magnetic field
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Matter and antimatter annihilate each other on contact
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"It's taken us five years to get here," says Professor Jeffrey Hangst
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CERN's next ambition is to create a beam of antimatter
"At the @placeholder we believe the temperatures were very very high and we understand in theory why antimatter disappeared but there is no physical theory to back it up."