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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.""
From the horses mouth :-) Athena, the guys who did it
Nature.com article(PDF)
home page of the experiment
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
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.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Now, the Cern particle accelerator in Geneva, Switzerland, has produced more than 50,000.
Sooo, exactly how many hydrogen atoms are in a handful anyway? My first guess would be in the ballpark of "A hell of a lot more than 50k".
Money for nothing, pix for free
It's clear at this point that the standard "SI" or metric system is no longer sufficient to describe the events in today's world. As such, the "PS", or "Pop Science" unit system is defined below for those interested by this handy guide
Information
Old Unit: bit
New Unit: Library of Congress
Time Interval
Old Unit: second
New Unit: eye-blink
Number of Particles
Old Unit: mole
New Unit: handful
Width (small distances)
Old Unit: millimeter
New Unit: human hair
Length (large distances)
Old Unit: meter, kilometer
New Unit: football field
Volume
Old Unit: cubic centimeter, liter
New Unit: football stadium
Energy
Old Unit: joule
New Unit: 100-watt-lightbulb-second
Mass
Old Unit: gram, kilogram
New Unit: CowboyNeal
More units will be assigned as they are needed
"We must stop these anti-hydrogen terrorists, I am informed that hydrogen is in things we use everyday like coke, and is even vital to Americans' survival. These people who are anti-hydrogen are anti-american and are seeking to destroy the very basis of our society, you can not be a friend of america if you are not a friend of hydrogen"
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
There's a simple and to-the-point description of Antihydrogen at the Wikipedia.
Bizarrely, the person responsible for the original submission is typing this sentence right now. Thankfully, brighter people have improved upon it somewhat since then... :)
Insert witty sig about inserting witty sig here, here.
You can tell they are anti-hydrogen because they all have little goatees and a really bad attitude.