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Antimatter Atoms Captured
Whamo writes: "Researchers at CERN think they have created and stored thousands of antiatoms in a particle trap. The researchers first used powerful magnetic fields to trap antiprotons then exposed this to a beam of positrons. Initial results indicate that at least some of the antiparticles have bound together to become neutral antihydrogen atoms. How cool is that?"
Well, that would depend on how fast the anti-hydrogen atoms are moving, wouldn't it?
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Well, how does this matter?
*grin*
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
"Researchers at CERN think they have created and stored thousands of antiatoms in a particle trap."
:)
Ok, they THINK they have? How can you tell?
IAECOTT--I am extremely clueless on this topic, so please someone out there give a newbie a little help with this....
thanks, and I hope to god I am not the only clueless one on this subject here.
Sent from your iPad.
very hot, when they leave the trap...
Pardon my stupidity on the subject, but what exactly does an ANTI-hydrogen atom do? Is a particular application of this type of knowledge useable such as radioactive waste disposal or something? *clueless*
I SURVIVED THE GREAT SLASHDOT BLACKOUT OF 2002!
from the antimatter-weapons-coming-soon dept
... My Midterm starts in an hour...
/ex
The research, which was sponsored by the RIAA, has initiated talks with the trapped atoms, but unfortunately refused to let them go free until they pay their proper licensing fees.
--It's Pimptastic!--
Hmm, if we combine anti-hydrogen and anti-oxygen then we could make anti-water! A new sports drink for the new millenium...
No todo lo que es oro brilla
Im not a physics major so excuse me if this is a stupid question but exactly how dangerous is this? is anyone taking this into account before we collapse the fabric of the universe or something like that. the article says that a lot of energy ca be released whe an anti whaever comes in contact with its positive counterpart. Usually things that release a lot of energy can be very dangerous and the more energy the more so they are. Gasoline is dangerous when it releases energy but uranium is more dangerous when it releases energy.
Last time I heard about any "really new" developments in antimatter, they were just figuring out how to contain 10-100 protons (circa 1992) (I know, I'm dating myself, whatever. :-) This is really cool news.
Still, even a million atoms is really physically small. I wonder
Anyway, just my $0.01. :-)
---NEW! Crash Windows NT/2000/XP from any account using only printf!
Very, Very Cool!
~Shane
I know that the dept tag is supposed to be funny, but the real benefit of this research is insight into very powerful propulsion systems. No? Not very sustainable at our current rate but definitely the next step toward reaching deeply into space.
Of course, anti-matter engines are waaaaaaaay off, but I think that we should see from the next-stop-Crab-Nebula dept. rather than from the I-frag-way-too-much dept.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
The theory goes that anti-hyrdogen should have all the same observable physical properties that hydrogen does. If we can start to manufacturer and store non-trivial quantities of the stuff we can actually start to test whether or not this is true. We can see if it has the same obsorbtion spectrum as hydrogen, the same atomic weight, etc...
If there is a difference we might be able to use it to confirm or disprove our assumption that the entire universe is made of 'normal' matter. For example, if there is an observable difference between the absorbtion spectra of hydrogen and anti-hydrogen, we'd have a test to determine if a distant galaxy was made of anti-matter. If there is no difference, well, we've found a very expensive way to heat a small cup of coffee.
-josh
Yummy on Cheerios.
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Around 9:30 last night a burrowing squirrel shorted out electrical lines causing an initial power surge followed by a blackout.
Experts believe that researchers had the magnetic containment field generators connected to a household UPS, which proved unable to keep the field in place.
The result of the containment failure has been described as being very similar to that of a "collapsing hrung." Unfortunately nobody has been able to identify what a hrung is, nor why one should choose to collapse on the CERN facility.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
My bags are packed, let's blow this hotdog stand, when do we leave for Alpha Centauri?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So, when do we get to see anitmatter powered stuff? Should be good to power a decent size beowulf cluster for some time. Or space travel. Or to some any energy crisis at hand. Or replace nuclear power stations, and whatever filthy mannter or producing energy us puny earthlings use.
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
that whatever power supply they have to keep those particles stored never goes out. Because if it does, they're going to have a loud bang.
If an antimatter galaxy collided with this galaxy that'd ruin your whole day, wouldn't it?
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If it did have negative gravitic mass, that would have all kinds of funky consequences. Maybe we could stabilize wormholes, and get faster-than-light travel and time travel. Fun to think about, anyway.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
......one of the first things some scientist did after they managed to do capture the stuff was suddenly yell "Antimatter containment is failing! We're gonna have to eject the core!!!!!!!!" before falling to the floor laughing hysterically?
You know there has to be someone, somewhere who is just dying to be the first person to say that.
As far as I understand, positrons and probably anti-ions would be affected by an electric/magnetic field and therefore can be controlled somewhat.
An anti-hydrogen would be a neutral antiatom, and the only way you could move it would be if you were to physically push it somewhere. The problem now might be that after you create the stuff you can't move it around anymore without an explosion.
And ever try keeping hydrogen in a jar? It doesn't want to stay in a jar for very long. I'm thinking that anti-hydrogen would behave in the same way, and once it gets out, normal atmosphere has normal hydrogen all over the place.
Of course the guys at CERN will be smarter than I am here, so they probably have some way out of this problem, but they haven't mentioned it in the new scientist article.
It's lukewarm. Didn't you read the article?
Seriously though, we're never going to power a warp drive with that. And let's face it, that's what we really care about, right? So we can all become starship engineers, get neat uniforms, and boldy go and score with hot alien chicks.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Alright AM freaks, I must admit this is one of the cooles things Ive read on Slashdot in a long time. Certainly one of the most important happenings in the particle physics world for a while IMHO.
Now, unfortunatley they said they dont even have enough to warm a cup of coffee, How long before weapons research in the US grbs ahold of this ? Or have they already.
To me this is akin to the first sussefull refinment of weapons grade Plutonium and Uranium.
Unfortunatley at the moment it requires too much enery to be usefull as an energy storage medium, but could be really cool for Interstellar travel,
NOW My question, Will Anti-Hydrogen react with say Normal Lithium to create energy or will its positron shell react with at a minimum the elecrton shell of the Lithium ?
If it dosent , storage should be easier than the trap they are now using,
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
Make nuclear proliferation seem like peanuts if the next Mr. Coffee can start a chain reaction that ends the universe.
With or without cream.
the universe has brought suit against the estate of Albert Einstein, claiming that fission is illegal under the DMCA, and that fair use of elementary particles applies only to cold fusion.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
It says a lot about the readers of a site that posts something like this, and all the most popular posts are slapstick humor about ATOMS.
Maybe Slashdot shouldn't be posting such complicated articles for a bunch of people that don't know Protons from Positrons
And it's a trend, too.
The theory goes that anti-hyrdogen should have all the same observable physical properties that hydrogen does.
I can't wait until they drop some of the anti-hydrogen atoms to whether they fall down or fall up.
Positron and antiprotons are charged and weigh almost nothing, so electromagnetic forces on them are waaay larger than gravity and you can't really tell if they fall up or down.
I know current wisdon is that antimatter will fall down... but wouldn't it be cool if the anti-matter fell up, essentially having a negative gravitational "charge"
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
These were only some hundred atoms, nothing more. Even if they did collide with matter, the damage would not be any worse than if you put a Windows XP CD-Rom into your nuker. Remember, they created those anti-atoms, and conservation of energy dictates that the annihilation of said anti-atoms cannot release any more energy than was needed to create them in the first place.
Say no to software patents.
Trapping and storing animatter is the first necessary step for utilizing it as an energy source. It wouldn't make much sense to use it planetside as it takes more energy to generate it than it would provide for us, but for space vehicles it would be invaluable.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
First, the method they are using to create the antiparticles is rather inefficient...I believe the proportion of energy expended vs energy stored in antiparticles is something on the order of 10^4.
A far more efficient method involves concentrating an intense pulse of light into a small enough space, to the point that the energy actually becomes matter. This has been demonstrated.
With efficient free electron lasers, it may be possible to mass produce antimatter on a large scale in this manner, making possible a greater number of experiments, as well as allowing manned interplanetary expeditions (and in theory interstellar).
Antimatter would make an excellent weapon in addition, since one would have the equivalent of a nuke that could be used on very small scales. You could in theory use it to make, say, antitank bullets that could be fired from a handheld gun. No heavy isotope decay products would be left to contaminate the battlefield, thus avoiding the nastiest side effect of nuclear bombs.
The big problem with antimatter annihilation, however, is that the energy released comes out in the form of high energy gamma rays. While the energy is there, it is difficult to harness in a practical device, and in the weapon example the gamma rays might irradiate everyone on the battlefield including the wielder of the weapon while doing little actual damage to the tank.
Finally, doing large scale chemistry experiments using antimatter versions of the elements could be rather dangerous...you'd probably need a kilo or more of the stuff, which would have rather catastrohpic results if it were allowed to interact with normal matter.
Fortunately, the researchers at CERN probably were physics majors, so they knew that while, yes, when antimatter collides with matter and disappears it releases (comparatively) huge amounts of energy, they only have a few thousand atoms collected together in their trap.
If you remember anything form high-school physics, you'll know that's not many.
Or, as the researcher interviewed put it, "you would get only a tiny amount of energy by combining the antimatter with matter--not even enough to warm a small cup of coffee."
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
From Sir Ernest Rutherford's speech to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1933:
Do they have an UPS on that particle trap?
--Charlie
I'm curious how they are trapping these neutral particles.
Once they form atoms, shouldn't they not be as easy to trap using magnetic fields?
Does anyonw know how they do this?
So you can use a magnetic field to trap positrons and/or antiprotons, because they have a charge, but when they form antihydrogen they become neutral. How, exactly, do you store a neutral molecule of antimatter? My understanding is the pennig trap doesn't work this way.
--
grep "xercist"
http://press.web.cern.ch/livefromcern/antimatter/f actory/AM-factory04-b.html
says that they just let the things anhiliate.
The write-up says that team 'created' the antimatter atoms. I wouldn't use the term 'created' too lightly when discussing particle physics. To me 'creating' matter implies they at a minimum converted energy to matter, or to take the term very literally - devised their own mini-Big Bang.
What they really did was assemble them from anti-electrons and anti-protons
.
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News for Nerds. Stuff that doesn't antimatter.
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Pretty damn cool, until bearded, evil versions of ourselves start popping up all over the place.
It hurts when I pee.
But cool, first we get transparent aluminum, then we get proper antimatter, whats next? warp drive right?
Call it Mony?
Antimatter would be an energy storage medium, akin to hydrogen in the dreams of the hydrogen society. Remember, the antimatter has to be manufactured at (huge?) cost, just as the hydrogen that is burning so clean has to be produced somewhere, somehow.
Just my 0.02 rants.
Hurricane Application Group, Dept of Meteorology Control, Ministry of Proactive Defense
Now that anti-hydrogen is so easily made, I just have to wait until they make anti-oxygen too. Combine them to make anti-H2O, and when I drink it it'll make thirsty...
I'm sorry, how do two things of the same polarity bind together to form neutral polarity?
positron = positively charged electron
anti-proton = negatively charged proton
positron + anti-proton = neutral anti-hydrogen
Wouldn't that just make you more thirsty?
Everything's been downhill since the TRS-80
energy released: (Energy is released when an antimatter particle comes in contact with it's opposite particle) e- + e+ (electron plus a positron) releases rougly 1.022MeV of energy
a proton plus an antiproton releases 2 * 938 MeV or 3 * 10^-10 joules per reaction. (The energy is released as photons)
The problem with detecting them is that light and anti light are identical.
Now lets see what energy of 1kg of protons woudl release: 1kg * 1proton/(1.67*10^-24 gm) = 5.69*10^26 protons
5.69*10^26 protons * 3*10^010 J/(proton reaction) = 1.78 * 10^17 J or about 50 billion Kilowatts
I do security
Don't cross the streams... crossing the streams would be bad =P
E.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Yeah yeah, but we won't go anywhere if we can't get some dilithium crystals captain!
All your f1rst p0st Beowulf cluster of grits are belong to Cowboy Neal.
From CERN toys! Antihydrogen kit! Some assembly required.
Contents: 1 antiproton, 1 positron. 1 magnetic bottle.
WARNING: Contents are volatile.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Force comes in Gravity, electromagnetic, stong and weak neuclear if I remember correctly. Because antimatter is only different in sign and not mass, gravity does not effect it differently.
I do security
The hot water tap here at work isn't quite hot enough to make decent tea; I was thinking it would be nice if there were something you could just add to heat the water with no waste product.
Sodium was all I could think of, and obviously a bad idea for several reasons, but some anti-water ought to work nicely!
... how many terajoules will it take to make those kilos of antihydrogenatoms in the first place??..
oops..
for more math than you probably want to look at, you can try:
http://sdphca.ucsd.edu/pdf_files/PHP04331.pdf
It's a paper on how to trap neutral atoms and it's pretty neat the way they get the fields to cancel out.
All the Star Treknologies are coming together now. First Transparent Aluminum, now antimatter. Whos working on the plasma coils and the transporter??
I remember reading an article a few years back on scientists combining anti-protons and anti-electrons to make anti-electrons. At the time they were still playing with the data they got, but the figured they made about 12 anti-atoms.
These guys are interesting in that they actually got the stuff to hold still for a while.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
I can see it now. Our first Anti-Hydrogen space ship explodes upon landing, so we switch to Anti-Helium, because it's safer. ;-)
Jonathan
...before the propeller heads collect enough of this stuff to transmute their lab into a very large, smoldering crater when they lose their magnetic confinement. Okay, maybe that would be way more antihydrogen than they could ever realistically hope to produce. I just don't want to live anywhere near the facillity that ever does.
A box to put your anti-particles in.
This is the Internet. You can say "fuck" here. - AC
Can anyone sum up how much power it takes to create a gram of antimatter? And how much power would a gram of antimater give when it collides with regular matter?
Remember E=mc^2 ? So, since you have 1 mass being antimatter and other mass being regular matter, and they both annihilate each other into energy wouldn't the output energy be
E = kc^2
where,
k = Mass of Antimatter + Mass of Regular matter
So, in the future, even if it costs us 1.9999999 units of energy to create 1 unit of energy worth of antimatter, we would be annihilating it with normal matter (with costs nothing). Then the result would be 2 units of energy. The surplus energy would be minimal (0.0000001 units), but with enough of a kick, we could have this surplus creating more antimatter, right?
(/end rambling)
This
So how do you keep a neutral particle in an electromagnetic field? Ionize it, and it's just an antiproton, again. It would seem to me that the lightest *anti-atom* you could keep in an electromagnetic field would be singly-ionized antihelium. (After all, doubly-ionized antihelium is just an anti-alpha particle, or is that alpha anti-particle?)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I'm pretty damn sure it doesn't take 10 Megatons of energy to construct a nuclear weapon!
So, uhh, why does this matter?
<ducks while running out door>
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Maybe he was just factoring in the relativistic effects of travelling at such a high velocity....
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
Ahh all we need now is a wat to regulate matter->antimatter flow.
On s serious note my I have a cousin on my grandmothers side that work at CERN (never migrated over to the US, his family stayed in the
OLD country). I believe his last name is Cochi
... is the very first sentence, which says that antimatter is "the most elusive matter in the universe." Elusive indeed! So elusive that it's not matter at all!
Is it okay to cry "Movie!" in a crowded firehouse? --Steve Martin
A gram of hydrogen contains about 6x10^23 atoms. Therefore, a "few thousand" weighs about 10^-20 grams -- much less than even the smallest virus.
.43^-10 grams)
Western Digital 120 GB HD = 1.32 lb (+/- 0.14 lb)
120 GB = 598.742 g
122, 880 MB = 598.742 g
125829120 KB = 598.742 g
128,849,018,880 Bytes = 598.742 g (+/- 63.5029g)
12 byte virus = 4.6^-10 grams (+/-
Yep, the smallest virus would still be about twice as heavy as the cluster of antimatter atoms
"Get them before they get....
unlikely.
You could've hired me.
http://www.fnal.gov/ This is the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. They have extensive information on particles, particle physics, and how they collider works in general. A very good read if you really want to find out about gluons, quarks, leptons, and all of their asociated anti-particles. G-der gder@gder.net
Does antimatter exhibit anti-gravitational forces? One thing I've always been facisnated with, is the idea of anti-gravity. The way I see it, if there are north and south polarities with magnets, why can't we find the equivalent repellent gravitational force?
I know that anti-hydrogen has been around for awhile, but still I caught myself being suspicious because the source was New Scientist. Oh man. It's funny how the mind works...
(Note: I'm not implying the parent doesn't understand this already. I just wanted to head off a misconception before it started.)
I much overestimated the destructive capability of several thousand anti-hydrogen.
That aside, I'm still curious how they plan to get rid of the stuff, especially as they refined the production capabilities and are able to create more of the stuff?
GPL Deconstructed
Ok, so it's a big reaction enough if you can get like a coke can of the stuff, I say find a way to generate tachyons and then use those to "push" your ship beyond light speed. Remember, basic physics, a gamma-ray will only leave it's point at c not c. Tachyons (if we could make and find them ) although therotical would produce engines capable of F.T.L. travel.
Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment ~Tesla
maybe he can't add...
-----
so i says to mable, i says
its going to be a couple years before i can go to walmart and buy a tank of antimatter. Damn.
-
More likely that the evil Spock from the alternate universe will mind meld with us and turn us into Windows freaks.
"In every revolution, there is one man with a marketing plan." - Bill Gates, to the evil Spock
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
/me grabs the fishook sitting on the bridge That's assuming the ship, let alone the passengers, could actually withstand the inertia from accelerating that fast.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
Antimatter propulsion would make even nuclear rockets seem like not much more than a rubber-band airplane. But until we can mass-produce the stuff fission still seems to be the most cost-effective thing we have.
Trapping anti-particles is essential if we ever want to explore the outer reaches of our solar system. It's the perfect source of energy since annihilation releases all the energy from matter. There isn't a better clean energy source out there since the only product from annihilation is pure electromagnetic radiation. Once antimatter is produced in mass quantities, we will reach a new technological plateau.
- A real programmer uses $ cat > a.out
...they got some great negatives.
Liberty uber alles.
I read somewhere that a teaspoon of antimatter, if exposed to ordinary matter, would produce an explosion so great it would blast the atmosphere from the earth. Granted we are far from a teaspoon of antimatter, but it is certainly something to keep in mind when reading about eager physicists creating this stuff. Lets hope these CERN folks aren't a cocky bunch.
Hmm, surely you're tachyon drive would zoom off into the distance and the rest of your matter would do nothing? Since the only thing that can travel faster than the speed of light as we know are tachons and definitely not standard matter at any rate :/
I recall doing quantum electrodynamics calculations for the positronium atom (one electron and one positron) in the 1960's.I seem to recall that experimentalists had already made the stuff; it's easier working with positrons than with antiprotons. Beyond cool, the whole idea was to check quantum electrodynamics in other systems. It's still the best theory every: six decimal point agreement between theory and experiment.
So you want to make GOLD atoms by hitting LEAD atoms with three anti-protons?
First, it seems that the anti-protons would react with any particles (as opposed to anti-particles) that they contact. But since anti-protons have a charge, they might not hit what you want. Using anti-nuetrons would be better, being neutral, so the electrons and protons don't affect it. But what if the first anti-particle just hit a neutron in the lead atom, and made an isotope, but don't degrade the atom down to a gold atom? You would probably have to use more than three to get the required reduction in protons to turn lead into gold.
Now for the second part. What would be the effect on an atom when several anti-particles are fired at it? The explosion would be very tiny to our observation, since we are made of billions of atoms, but to the atom itself, it would be catastrophic. Compare it to a house. There are wood 2-by-4s in the walls, holding everything together. An anti-2-by-4 comes flying in, contacts a wall, and annihilates itself along with the point of the wall it touched. Total conversion of matter and anti-matter into energy. How much energy do you think those two items have? Would it be enough to destroy the house? Probably.
So for an atom, you would have the remainder of the neutrons, protons, and electrons, even though they weren't hit with the anti-matter, sent spinning out of control like Darth Vader at the end of Star Wars. No gold for you.
Good idea though.
One place where these technologies will be needed is deep space, where solar power is useless. The ability to carry large amounts of energy in a small amount of matter becomes crucial. Otherwise, the more matter you have to take, the more fuel you will need to go. The biggest obstacle to a trip to Mars, right now, is that current fuels do not have a high enough thrust-mass ratio. Antimatter and fussion have much better ratios, and a small tank of either could do more than a modern power plant, and we could build a large reserve here and send that along instead of the entire production process.
Anti-2x4's? hehehe, the posting is fine, but the thought of an anti-2x4 just struck me as funny. :)
Stupid is as stupid dies.
And of course there will be one nice, friendly Eric Cartman running around singing christmas carols and giving everyone compliments. :)
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Would it be enough to destroy the house? Probably
Yes, and it seems to me that it would blast the atom apart, but - atoms are quite capable of emitting quite large bursts of energy and stay together, and houses are held together by nails, not the weak nuclear force. I've got no idea... I can visualize most of the forces involved, but I have no idea what the equation would look like (heck, thinking about it, I don't even know of the top of my head what form the energy produced is). Thus my plea for a physics geek to think about it for a second or two.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Your journal did not llow me to respond, so I had to post here to communicate with you. Since this discussion is "illicit" (offtopic) I am more concerned with raising issues than presenting a clear and concise argument. Please keep that in mind.
I do not disagree with the basic argument of your journal entry, but with your first assertion, regarding the definition of the term piracy.
Piracy is the boldly commited illegal act of violent misappropriation of goods or property, as in robbery. Robbery, a public act, when commited in transit over distribution channels, originally over the high seas, is piracy, though it can also apply to hijacking an airplane, or carjacking a delivery truck. The violence of robbery is enough to demonize it, but the large scale of violence makes it a more effective term than "software robery."
"Software piracy" is a misnomer, as is "software theft". Your arguments apply to the phrase software theft, which would be individual acts or crimes. The term software piracy leverages a loaded word which is more damning than simple theft, as piracy alludes to a violent large scale operation, akin to "organized crime" taking place over unpopulated areas such as the open ocean, or as it were, the Internet.
"Software theft" really amounts to unauthorized reproduction of information media. It seems the closest analog of this behaivor before the Internet became a pubic medium would be linked to the behaivor allowed by the Gutenberg Press - copying the Bible for mass distribution against the will of the "catholic" church, which restricted biblical access to ordained priests, so as to preserve their power structure.
This metaphor is not quite correct either, because there is a differnce between the archaic church as it existed centuries ago, and the modern day entertainment media production and distribution houses. This differnce is admittedly ideological, and not as subject to linguistic corruption. I'd say it falls somewhere in the spectrum of the ideologies of Capitalism versus Communism (economically, not with respect to practices of governance.) In contrast, the organized church did use this restriction as an improper form of goernance.
Another interesting attempt at demonizing unauthorized media distribution is the term bootlegging as applied to software. This term seems more accurate than "software piracy" especially in light of your journal post, as bootlegging doesn't involve embezzlement or theft(preventing useage by the rightful owner) but smuggling or illegal distribution. Bootlegging is also not as associated with violent behaivor, so wasn't as succesful (sensational) a term as was piracy. Bootlegging is a bit too crude of a term, as software bootlegging deserves a more refined term. The software itself is not contraband, as was prohibition era alcohol. The question is whether "bootlegging" is based on the act of possessing an illict substance with transportation being incidental, or illegal transportation with possesion being incidental. This might be considered in light of how in some States* alcohol is/was legal to possess for personal use, but not to transport/sell. Similarly in some places alocohol consumption wasn't criminal, just possesion. Both of these two situations seem engineered to "grandfather" those who had obtained alcohol prior to it becoming illicit, but to dry out future uses of alcohol.
One last interesting phrase to consider is "pirate radio". In contrast to using a legal medium to illegally distribute, this refers to illegally using a medium to distribute otherwise legal material. This would illustrate that the term "piracy" is far overused, in danger of corruption beyond resonable definition, which is unfortunate considering the source of the corruption. Being a natural language, useage determines the definition of words, published dictionaries are more akin to surveys then definitive useage manuals. The benefit of useing a natural language over a synthetic language, is the inherent flexibility makes it powerful. The problem arises when mass media uses its power to derail a language by propogating contrary or distorted definitions. The end result is the worst kind of synthetic language, because the expressive power is deliberately crippled with regard to issues that the media house has a vested interest in. In this regard, the insidious corruption of language (piracy, hacking, free, communist, punk, nigger, holocaust, civil disobediance, liberal, and just about every other "loaded" word you can think of) is at best unfortunate, and at worst just as bad as the orignial "catholic" church restricting mass reproduction of the Bible in order to opress civilization.
Slashdot Moderators: If you have read this far, but were offended, then you at least found this post interesting. So if you can't think of a response, perhaps you should moderate this as interesting so that another may see it and post an appropriately damning response. If you mark this as offtopic despite my warning in the title, then you are likely doing the community a disservice. If you feel this is simply a troll with no redeeming content, then moderate it as a troll unworthy of public resonse. I don't think "Insightful" would be appropriate for this post.
It would have to be one hell of a magnetic bottle in order to be portable and avoid the possibility of material/chamber contact under the potentially extreme accelerations of the battlefield. In order to justify all the overhead of the containment equipment, a robot might want to carry enough ammunition to do significant damage. That'd require a significant amount of material. Multiply the power of one antimatter "bullet" by the number of bullets contained in an entire magazine. Now imagine if one of these robots was hit by fire from another robot-- its entire magazine could react at once. That'd be a hell of a blast.
There would probably have to be some tradeoff in balancing the number of shots one robot could fire against the size of the explosion that would occur if something went wrong. I imagine this would have some impact on the usefulness of the weapons, considering that you might wind up having to use many robots (each with their own containment equipment and all the other overhead).
How the hell are we going to draw square number -1 in the Periodic Table of Elements?
Is it just me, or does it sound like a lot of fun to catch these anti-hydrogen on fire and create antifire. Or smash them together and create antifusion. Sure, we could just annihilate them to make energy, but wouldn't it be such a greater testament to technology (not to mention our sense of irony) if we went through all the trouble of making antimatter just to turn it into a inefficient antiinternal-combustion engine?
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
My chemistry teacher got this wrong today too (parent post got it right)... the reason it's called Warp Speed is it actually Warps space (using an extension of the wormhole theory - or is that proven yet? I can't remember).
Anyway, he claimed that by the time anything actually reached Warp factor something it would be all energy, although the warping of space means that it is fast (c^x fast) relative to something outside of the warp bubble.
Anyone know what happens when warp bubbles collide?
On second thought, anyone know if matter + antimatter actually does = lots of energy? I thought that they were going to do some kind of experiment with that but I never heard any more.
MIKE
Beware the JabberOrk.
Maybe he was just factoring in the relativistic effects of travelling at such a high velocity....
If they are losing one third of the travel trip due to time dilation to get to just the next planet they must be taking one hell of a scenic route, ie a a few laps of the Kuiper belt or the like at the very least.
just so long as they dont start playing with antimass-specrometers and end up blowing innocent scientists into alternate realities. i'll be happy.
...I got nothing.
Everyone assumes that matter + antimatter produces lots of energy.
Unfortunately, every time someone tries to prove it, there are no survivors.
Heh, The Physics of Star Trek = good book. I should finish it sometime.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
Likely to be quite hot if their containment field collapses...
maybe he can't add...
;-)
Ya, they don't teach us that junk in engineering...
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
This has been done before already this isnt anything new.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
A friend of mine is currently working at CERN (no, she is not involved in this project).
Since she doesn't understand french one bit better than me (that is, not at all) I would presume that they speak english a lot of the time.
CERN happens to attract bright young things from all over Europe you know...
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
But the Spock in the alterative universe wasn't really evil (unlike the evil Kirk et. al.). That was the whole point of that episode, in both universes he was neither good nor evil, but logical.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Mass-energy equivalence is demonstrated all the time in particle accelerators, where particle-antiparticle pairs are formed by high-energy collisions. The threshold energies required are mc^2 (in the centre-of-mass frame, more beam energy than mc^2 is required for a stationary target because it recoils and carries some of the energy off). So, yes. matter + antimatter does indeed = lots of energy...
As for the stuff about warp theory... well, people have tried applying general relativity to find ways of travelling FTL, though without accepted success yet... have a search for Alcubierre (though it could be utter crap, I don't know enough about GR to comment!)
Actually "mr. smartass", warpdrive doesn't work by travelling very fast. The concept is that you warp space around you to travel a short distance which just happens to be a shortcut through warped space (hence the name).
Its impossible with current physics to go faster than the speed of light. However, its not impossible to find shortcuts. So instead of travelling the 10^17 km [or whatever it is] to pluto you'd be traveling say 10^14 km at 30,000km/h or something. From a standstill that would look like you are 1000*30,000 = 30,000,000 km/h
etc..
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Hmmm.
You don't by chance work for Intel, do you? Or perhaps used to, around the time when the first Pentium processors came out?
2+2=5 for suitably large values of 2 and all?
Well we've got anti-anti-matter!
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
On second thought, anyone know if matter + antimatter actually does = lots of energy? I thought that they were going to do some kind of experiment with that but I never heard any more.
.005 grammes of antimatter (quite a lot), and mixed it with the equivilant matter, we would be converting .01 grammes (.00001kg) of matter into energy,
Well, if we took
so If we take E=MC^2
Where M=mass(in kg), C=speed of light (3*10^8 m/s)
= 1*10^-5* 3*10^8 * 3*10^8
= 1*10^-5 * 9*10^16
= 9 * 10^11 Joules of energy
Which is enough to light 10,000 100 watt light bulbs for about 10 days
Not at all: The end of one atom on earth. An antiparticle or anti atom can only anihilate one normal particle or atom, giving off a gamma ray.
Fiat Lux.
Aww come on, there's a little bit of Beavis in every one of us....
In an admittedly crude comparison to Hiroshima, where the area of destruction was somewhere near 3 miles and 1% of the matter in the bomb was converted to energy, would an antimatter bomb of equal size destroy 300 miles of landscape? Leave a crater 50-100 miles deep? Is that insane or what?
On the other side of the coin, would a bomb the size of a pack of smokes (a stick of gum?) destroy the entire sprawl of Los Angeles?
Ah, i thought the title said "Animation of Atoms captured"!, I've been looking for a damn link to the animation on the article for the past 10 minutes
[alk]
Electrons and positrons annihilate neatly into pure photons, but protons and anti-protons produce several other sub-particles, in addition to gamma rays.
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/msad12no v97_1.htm
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
Although one should note that it takes light 4 hours to get to Pluto from Earth, or nearly 8.5 hours round-trip. (Just for reference, it takes light only 8 minutes, 18 seconds to go from Sun to Earth.)
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
Not at our point of contact, but do you know how to make the plutonium atoms from scratch.
NO! They were formed from the big bang and creation and all that blowing up, crashing, melting stuff.
We only took an existing highly formed element and modified it into a weapons grade tool.
So it could very well have taken 10 Megatons of energy over several million million years give or take.
Could it not....
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
Star Trek is just a TV show, and my message was just a joke
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Actually, the source I read put it that way. As for why I try to make my points sound clear, coherent, and informed : I'm trying to get karma, and sometimes I don't have anything really clever to say but want the mod points :).
No way man! You're bumming me out, and all this time I thought it was cinema verité.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke