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Cern Mass Produces Anti-Hydrogen

Posted by chrisd on from the mr-fusion-not-far-behind dept.

Izeickl writes "The BBC is reporting Here about scientists in the Cern particle accelerator in Geneva, Switzerland have mass produced over 50,000 atoms allowing them to test basic Physics using them, however "Harvard physicist Gerald Gabrielse said: "Our long experience with these very difficult experiments warns that antihydrogen may not have really been produced.""

5 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. I was lucky... by Mister+Transistor · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Enough to actually get to see the antimatter production ring at Fermilab. Once or twice a year, they go into a maintenance shutdown and give small informal tours.

    What used to be the main ring years ago is now the antimatter ring. The magnets were all upgraded to superconductors, and they added buncher/debunchers to the ring to squeeze protons together and apart which, every so often produces a stray anti-proton.

    Cern is way ahead of Fermi in that they are producing full anti-atoms, whereas Fermi is only making anti-particles.

    Definitely forget about efficiency in production, the guy giving the tour said their electric bill is about a million dollars a month, and they make very few anti-protons from all that power! I bet they're ComEd's best customer. They can't run during the summer air-conditioning months, as they would suck too much energy from the grid in Illinois.

    The guide also said as long as the magnets stay supercooled, the anti-protons will stay suspended in the ring for up to a month (unless they hit stray matter and blow up sooner).

    After the tour, we got to play stump the genius - one of the research physicists there was nice enough to give a Q & A session. A most informative and cool tour, getting to see something that most "civilians" never get to lay eyes on.

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    -- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
    1. Re:I was lucky... by RichN · · Score: 3, Interesting
      What used to be the main ring years ago is now the antimatter ring.

      Sorry. What used to be the main ring is no longer in service. The Antiproton source was operational when the main ring was being used.

      In recent years, we've added the main injector and recycler rings, to help store the antiprotons left over from the collider studies (since they're so costly to make.)

      I bet they're ComEd's best customer.

      Fermi has its own feed from ComEd. In the past, ComEd has been Fermilab's best customer; they pay/credit Fermi in order to tap off some of the capacity. I don't believe this happened this summer, though (since we're in a Collider Run).

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      Rich

  2. Re:Those wacky scientists... by Mister+Transistor · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You forgot - Element 117 and 118 - Just Kidding!

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    -- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
  3. waste of power by abdulwahid · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Making antiprotons requires 10 billion times more energy than it produces. For example, the antimatter produced each year at Cern could power a 100 watt light bulb for just 15 minutes.

    10 billion lightbulbs! So, they used enough electricity to power a small city for a whole year and the result is....they might have been fooled into a false positive result. I am sure there are lots of better ways of using this power rather than chasing gold at bottoms of rainbows

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    perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10);'
  4. Anyone Else... by Njoyda+Sauce · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Find it odd that this was filed under toys? It'd certainly be the biggest most expensive toy on the market.

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    You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever.