CERN Scientists Trap Antimatter for Almost 17 Minutes

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2386429,00.asp

by nickolai • 15 years ago

95 45 15 years ago

pcmag.com

zitterbewegung• 15 years ago

Article in nature for the inclined http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphys...

Groxx• 15 years ago

I was just struck by the accuracy of this: http://xkcd.com/906/

Thanks for the link! I wish I could follow it more closely, but overall 'tis interesting stuff.

driverdan• 15 years ago

Thank you! A PCMag link about physics? Srsly?

maeon32• 15 years ago

If only we could develop a small device (say the size of a briefcase) to convert electricity to antimatter and then slow release antimatter reaction back to electricity.

It would make electric vehicles much more economical than oil. We could finally make a ship that could pack enough punch to make a trip to the asteroid belt and back. To bring back the unobtainium.

reemrevnivek• 15 years ago

The ability to carry road-trip quantities of antimatter in a briefcase would take the threat of terrorism to a whole new level. How much would you need to take out a plane? A building? A city?

Nuclear cars would be cool, too, but I think we need to consider the weaponizable nature (both for governmental military forces and for terrorists) of these technologies.

silvestrov• 15 years ago

From Wikipedia: The reaction of 1 kg of antimatter with 1 kg of matter would produce [...] the rough equivalent of 43 megatons of TNT. For comparison, Tsar Bomb, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, reacted an estimated yield of 50 megatons.

I dare say this would take a briefcase bomb to a whole new level.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter#Fuel

jws• 15 years ago

The energy density of antimatter has 9 more zero compared to TNT.

So, roughly speaking, a soda bottle of antimatter is a megaton of TNT[1]. Well, half a soda bottle if you ask the stewardess for a soda of non-antimatter once you get on the plane.

If you want to equal the largest of nuclear warheads tested, you will have to pay a small overage fee on your luggage.

[1] I'm ignoring containment overhead. Once you show me a gram of antimatter we can talk about containment.

TheAmazingIdiot• 15 years ago

I can already buy an unlimited amount of gasoline from thousands of sources..

I can also buy any type of "missle" (read vehicle).

I can also buy fertilizer, cheaply.

Say I forego the fertilizer route, and fill my car full of gasoline. Now, all I need to is then put a rag in the gas intake and break off the tab. I have a molotov cartail, that, when steered does a lot of damage.

It's easy to kill people and cause terror. Moreso, if you are an engineer. But its decency and ethics that keep people from doing these sort of things.

palish2• 15 years ago

What threat of terrorism? When's the last time you were terrorized? There is no terrorism except in the media and in ourselves.

Surely as scientists we could take some comfort in the statistics of the likelihood of any one of us actually experiencing "terrorism" first hand....

lwat• 15 years ago

No it wouldn't make electric vehicles more economic. It takes many orders of magnitude more energy (and thus money) to create and capture antimatter than we'd ever get out of it in your car.

palish2• 15 years ago

Right now it takes many orders of magnitude more energy.

When electricity was first being invented for human utility, I bet it took several orders of magnitude more energy to package it than to simply light a candle, for example.

Or when candles were first invented, it took several orders of magnitude more energy to create one than to keep a campfire going. Etc.

Right now we're at the "invent a candle" stage, and talking about the "hydroelectric dam" stage, so it's hard to imagine. But it's far from impossible.

jacques_chester3• 15 years ago

Antimatter is a terrible store of energy because it is "fail-dangerous". The failure mode is a catastrophic release of energy.

The closest comparison for endurance would be nuclear power. Its worst failure mode is meltdown, which while very bad is nothing like as destructive as an AM explosion.

And it gets worse! Suppose your AM containment fails in a carpark. The explosion will cause a chain reaction of car explosions.

Finally, there is the incredible inefficiency with which AM is manufactured. It takes gigawatts and many hours of accelerator time to create even minute quantities. Because the only way we know of to create AM is smashing things together in particle accelerators. There aren't many LHCs to go around.

superkarn3• 15 years ago

In the far future, I could see technology advancing enough to where we could efficiently create/manufacture antimatter (e.g. from a star or something).

But the "fail-dangerous" issue is more of a user responsibility, and I don't see that being solved anytime before the above technology is discovered (if ever).

zbanks2• 15 years ago

Has anyone heard if they managed to observe the effect of gravity on the particles? The Nature article was vague...

I remember hearing that this was one of the reasons why they needed to trap antimatter for observable lengths of time. To my understanding, they aren't completely sure yet which way antimatter "falls."

foob2• 15 years ago

It will still be a while before this is directly observed.

We're fairly sure that it "falls" downwards for a wide range of theoretical reasons and also due to the 1987 observation of gravitational lensing in neutrinos and antineutrinos from a supernova. If we observe the opposite in a lab then it will be incredible because we'll have to reevaluate a lot of what we think we know about physics. If we observe it "falling down" then it will be an important result but not at all revolutionary.

zbanks2• 15 years ago

Thanks. I guess it's similar to the whole P != NP issue.

superkarn3• 15 years ago

"falling down" - does that mean gravity is an attractive force between matter-antimatter or antimatter-antimatter (or both)?

InclinedPlane2• 15 years ago

This is actually somewhat of a complicated topic. The overwhelming expectation is that anti-matter has the same inertial and gravitational mass as ordinary matter does. However, there are some intriguing possibilities for matter that doesn't.

Consider what happens if an object has "negative mass" though. It would be repelled by ordinary matter. OK, simple enough though, right. But then what happens? Well, F = ma right? So the repulsive force would repel ordinary matter, but it would result in an attractive acceleration of the negative mass. Now, if it turned out that gravitational and inertial mass could be different, that would be an incredible result as well.

foxhill• 15 years ago

(only a very rough grounding in particle physics here)

it offers an explanation for the abundance of matter - if large enough quantities of matter and anti-matter are created, and can gain enough separation, then although the attractive forces of the electromagnetic attraction are strong, the result of gravity repulsing opposite matter types would separate them. so matter/anti-matter creation would be symmetric, but all the anti matter would be beyond the edge of the observable universe.

lets just hope the LHC doesn't create a mini black hole which eats up the planet, before we find out..!

pella2• 15 years ago

nearly 17 minutes = 1,000 seconds, or 16 minutes and 40 seconds.

ryandvm• 15 years ago

Thanks?

pella2• 15 years ago

see the news headlines ...

-"Stick Up: Antimatter Atoms Trapped for More Than 15 Minutes" by Scientific American

- "Antimatter Trapped for Amazingly Long 16 Minutes" by Foxnews

-"Scientists hold anti-matter for 17 minutes" by Radioaustralia

MaxGabriel• 15 years ago

Pretty impressive, but still not nearly long enough to survive a trip to the Vatican

dpcan• 15 years ago

I believe you are thinking of strange matter / strangelets :)

mason55• 15 years ago

Or maybe just Anti-Popes

redfloatplane• 15 years ago

And we still haven't invented the field of symbology. Looks like it'll be a while until Dan Brown's prophecy comes to pass.

jeangenie• 15 years ago

any speculation on when the head crabs are coming?

richbradshaw• 15 years ago

You need a resonance cascade for that to happen, which so far seems unlikely.

CERN Scientists Trap Antimatter for Almost 17 Minutes

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