Cern Mass Produces Anti-Hydrogen

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.""

Comments

I was lucky...

[Mister Transistor]

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.