Slashdot Mirror
Antimatter Molecule Should Boost Laser Power
Laser Lover writes "Molecules made by combining an electron with their anti-particle positron have been created by researchers at the University of California Riverside. The team's long term goal is to use the exotic material to create 'an annihilation gamma ray laser', potentially one million times more powerful than existing lasers. 'An electron can hook up with its antiparticle, the positron, to form a hydrogen-like atom called positronium (Ps). It survives for less than 150 nanoseconds before it is annihilated in a puff of gamma radiation. It was known that two positronium atoms should be able to bind together to form a molecule ... '"
would it be ready in time for the upcoming war with iran?
Now I'm afraid to plug in my PS/2 mouse.
Usage: km/h for speed (kilometers per hour); kph for very slow impulses (kilopond hours).
Because that's what they were saying the first time this was posted.
Granted, more powerful lasers would be great for long-distance communications, but what kind of materials could be used in fiber-optic cables to transmit gamma rays? What kind of insulation would the cable have to use?
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
While being so excited that it's a million times more powerful, we forgot to say it'll be a million times more expensive. You don't find antimatter laying on the ground you know!
Well, part of it, anyway:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v449/n7159/abs/nature06094.html
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
Does this have any application other than in "defence"? I imagine it takes vast amounts of energy to create the positronium and so that means a H bomb.
Essentially this then becomes a way of concentrating some of the power of a H bomb into an extremely powerful but very narrow beam - eg in anti-missile "defence".
So would the sharks be a million times more powerful, or could we just use one million *tiny* fricking lasers?
they mean a Bose-Einstein condensate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_condensate/
Damn it, how long will it be before the teenagers at my local cinema have one of these?
Lasers?
That won't even penetrate our navigational shields!
Where are your phasers?
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
Next on /.! DIY positronium laser using household items.
May be annihilation gamma ray laser can destroy the dupes of slashdot? Nothing else seems to work...
There's an interview with David Cassidy about this in the 13th September Nature Podcast (the page also has the podcast as a direct MP3 download and a transcript).
i doubt a mod will even see this with an AC attatched to it, but, meh.
try relating this idea with this one
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/13/2328233
iirc a few people were curious as to what it may take to get this off the ground (pun so intended) as it were. =P
"Tonight on "It's the mind" we examine the phenomenon of déjà-vu, that strange feeling we sometimes get that we've lived through something before."
All I have to say is: "Yes, Dr. Scott, a laser capable of emitting a beam of pure anti-matter."
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
The sharks will be happy.
"This is America... where the will of the few outweigh the outrage of the many..." - Unknown
I was somehow led to believe that a molecule was produced by the combination of two atoms -- which each have at least one proton (in the case of Hydrogen). How does combining an electron with a positron (both very very low mass particles; think "mosquitoes" compared to the "elephant" protons and neutrons in the nucleus) equal an atom -- let alone two or more atoms to equal a molecule?
It may be cool, but perhaps we need a new name for it. Molecule just doesn't fit; sorry.
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
Seriously, does it at all feel like we're on the Ascendancy/ Galactic Civ tech tree? And that we've skipped ahead a few too many techs? Sheesh.
I read the part about Gamma Rays and the part "potentially one million times more powerful than existing lasers"
the first thing that sprung to mind, is the author David Banner?
the next thing would be the warning on the side of the device
Warning exposure may result in green eyes when changing a tyre
loss of memory / Loss of Hair / or extreme Hulkism with hilarious consequences
To conserve momentum (and other) at least two photons are released in opposite direction when the two particles annihilate each other. If this is part of a gamma ray laser, you will have two rays: One aimed at your enemy, one in your face, and a mirror will probably not work at 0.5MeV.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Forget TFA. All you need to know to write a gut-reaction reply is contained in the wonderful phrase 'annihilation gamma ray laser.' Let's start: Have scientists gone too far? Could this be used as a weapon? Could it fall into the wrong hands? React away. :-)
If they do manage to create a powerful laser like this, could it be used to power stuff, like the Space Elevator?
:(
The Article seems to imply, though, that it only lasts a couple hundred nanoseconds. I wonder if it can be sustained. Otherwise, its killing-only
Will we be developing Evangelions to fire these?
But mass is less relevant than you may think. The electron-positron pair is held together by the Coulomb force, which is the same force that binds the proton and the electron. The electron-positron system has a net electric charge of 0, making it electrically neutral.
As I said in the title, maybe "atom" is a bad word to describe this system. However, the word "atom" comes from a Greek word meaning "indivisible", and since we've since discovered that what we call atoms are divisible after all, the word isn't even appropriate in its accepted usage.
Laser Lover didn't writes "Molecules made by combining an electron with their anti-particle positron have not been created by researchers at the University of California Riverside. The team's long term goal is to never use the exotic material to create 'an creation gamma ray laser', potentially one million times less powerful than existing lasers. 'An electron can't hook up with its antiparticle, the positron, to form a hydrogen-like atom called positronium (Ps). It can't possibly survive for less than 150 nanoseconds before it isn't annihilated in a puff of gamma radiation. It wasn't known that two positronium atoms shouldn't be able to bind together to form a molecule ... '"
There, now the dupe and anti-dupe can form a stable dupe atom, which can bind with other dupe atoms to form powerful dupe lase.... oh dear GOD NO!!!
You most certainly CAN end a war with weapons.
But you can't win a war with one eye on CNN to gage the public response to your use of your weapons. That is why we won't use our weapons to win wars anymore.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Two words... DEATH STAR! :D
you can't hug a child with nuclear arms.....(x_x)
Is a homonym of it just used to describe cattle and giraffes now? It certainly rolls off the tongue a bit more easily than "x-raser".
like a bazooka. The blow back would prevent this from being shoulder fired. Still, this would be a cool support weapon to back up your Gauss rifle shock troops.
Think global, act loco
if they have a Ps2 molecule laser, and add one more Ps, I wonder if that would that make the ray blue...
You beat the tar out of him, he's humiliated, and goes away for a few days, then he comes back and shoots you in the back.
You didn't win a war, there, you won a fight. The two are not the same thing.
You fight him, make it clear that you're going to win, and then talk with him such that he gets a way out and hostilities turn into a mutually acceptable relationship -- that's winning a war. You need the fists, but you also need some intelligent action.
This is not to say that there are not occasions where the fists are the ONLY intelligent thing, but that means your opponent is one stupid piece of crap. Such people exist, and they're more likely to be part of a bar fight, but I don't think the metaphor extends to nations often, if at all, as nations are large groups of people, not just one Saddam.
Sounds like something out of Superman.
...about a new GR-DVD format, but I'm too lazy to flesh it out. Go ahead and pretend that I did, and mod this up.
Don't cross the streams!
Are mostly already in use. If you read the book "The Day After Roswell", it will clear up most of the suspicious side of your mind. In the book, Col. Corso talks about having copies of the Tesla papers and the proposals for weapons like the "Death Ray". Don't believe me huh?? Well, you know that the Roswell incident happened on the 4th of Jul right? The National Security Act of 1947 became law on July 26, 1947 22 days after Roswell. It created the Department of the Air Force, CIA, Department of Defense, etc... The transistor was supposedly "Invented" in 1947 by Bell Labs shortly after roswell, LOL. Boy what an exciting year. Anyway, these secret groups have been doing much while you have been focused on working for the men. Read the book and watch the movie "Secret Space" on Google video, while you are at it, watch "Disclosure Project" on Google. Heck, just Google "David Icke" and get all caught up to date. Here's a clip of an attempt to hit one with a particle beam or some sorta weapon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxaegClR05I
You know, NASA, aside from being a NAZI organization, can't even televise the missions anymore because of all the UFO showing up on camera. Well, it was actually that folks were then having those images show up on the front page of the papers that finally had them encrypt it. Thanks to a Canadian friend, we have those transmissions.
Heres another choice film
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9141847328034766279&q=mir+ufo&total=55&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=8
Take Care
Read the damn book "The Day After Roswell"
As Scotty would say "If we can divert the phaser banks through the dilithium crystals we could boost the warp drive".
It ended with a public radio broadcast of the emperor proclaiming himself to not be a God, and to end the war. If he doesn't do that, the war wouldn't have ended. So basically, what we needed was Saddam to surrender and tell everyone to stop fighting. I guess if Osama said that now, it might work ,but there are so many factions now that it wouldn't immediately end the war.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Wow.... How many conspiracy theories can you cram into one post?
Actually, the real conspiracy runs far more deeply than even David Icke could imagine.
I noticed you are using dates such as "July 26, 1947". That shows that you are still blind to the true conspiracy - that every day is in fact 4 days, just like a cube has 4 sides (not 6, like the lizard alien Illuminati wants you to think). And that's only the tip of the iceberg. Get up to date at http://www.timecube.com/ .
Not on CNN, which is being very effectively censored even now. (How many dead Iraqis, out of the hundreds of thousands in this war, have you seen?)
The aftermath of the mass murder will be shown on Al Jazeera however, and copied from there to other TV channels all over the non-U.S. world. TVs in the U.S. will be showing Britney.
There's information that Japan had tried to surrender before the US dropped the bombs on them, but this surrender was considered inconvenient so it was ignored. You want my sources? BAH! This is Slashdot! We don't need no steenkin sources!
I should hope so. A genocide committed in full view of TV screens all over the world? *shudder* People will forget Adolf Hitler and remember the USA instead as the far greater evil, just as people have mostly forgotten Mussolini because Hitler was so much worse.
"annihilated in a puff of gamma radiation"
Wait a minute Egon. I thought you said crossing the streams was a bad idea.
Coincidence? I think not!
And you people said it would take a ludicrous amount of power. Hah!
Menus: Linux=function, Windows=vendor, OS X=as little as possible. Makes a statement, don't you think?
No problem having two ends of destructive power... just ask Darth Maul...
It just means that the US can hit China and Russia at the same time, or US bases in Iraq can hit Syria and Iran at the same time... sounds groovy...
Can anyone make an educated guess what would happen if this ray was fired at a building? At a car? At a person?
only with words? Yea they have to be the right words, and there has to be a consensus among the leaders. Right now we have Republicans screaming one thing, and Democrats screaming another. And nobody is getting shit done. I blame the neocons AND the political "liberals" for leaving the moderates majority holding the bag. And I say "liberals" in quotes because they aren't real liberals, they sing the liberal tune but are totally empty of any progressive ideals.
Almost all the kids being sent to war are moderates, as are their parents. And (except in places like San Francisco, Palo Alto, Berkeley, etc) the people who are for AND against the war with Iraq are also moderates. But the "liberal" politicians and the neocons play both sides off each other. It's not some evil conspiracy to rule the world either, it's just a survival tactic used by people who are useless leeches that have no business in the office they hold.
As for Iran, by the time we can get around to dealing with the Iranian threat they will have sent some big missiles onto Israel. And then I think we'll have a pretty unanimous voice as to what position Americans have on Iran, hopefully when that time comes we'll get the politicians who represent us to send the same message as us.
(please mark this thread as offtopic - we should be talking about awesome antimatter lasers, not boring US international policy)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Indeed surrender was offered twice before (iirc), but turned down because it was conditional. The nukes were not the most devastating attacks on Japan, they were just the most devastating single events. The carpet bombing of Japanese cities for many months did far more damage. The purpose of dropping the bomb was to show Japan and Russia the resolve and capability of the US military to basically bomb targets indefinitely. I mention Russia because even though there was some cooperation between the Soviets and the Allies in defeating the Axis powers, there was a definite concern even at that time by Allied governments as to how far the Soviets would grow their empire.
What is your point anyways? In a few decades few people from that era will even be alive. I think we all know now it's not good to drop radiological devices on civilian populations, and in the future I believe we will avoid it. Our development of precision weapons, military robotics, and very powerful specialized chemical weapons is evidence of the US government and military's resolve to avoid nuclear confrontations.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I don't know, but it'll be really funny when all the positrons leak out into their pocket.
I'm still able and willing to think about things truly abhorrent and unacceptable, because these things still exist even when I hold the pillow really tight over my head. How else to avoid them? Genocide exists, even today. I hate it. The first wrong step is treating people as things, or as the "(ethnic class) Problem". From there it's Welcome to Nightmare City.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Do you have an idea how much power you need to create all those positrons? Hint: Energy conservation doesn't have an exception for antimatter.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Damn, jokes about sharks aside, the scientific and technical implications of a gamma laser will be immense. Nuclear physicists will love to have one of these to probe nuclei with as an example ( so far you need a massive particle accelerator to do it ). Heck, if you reached sufficiently high energies you could even use it to fission the actinides in nuclear waste without the need to rely on particle accelerators or critical reactors. Positron-electron annihilation probably won't get you high enough energies for that thou.. You would need something in the GeV range of energies.
Zonk only reads Slashdot every couple of days, when he gets a 12-pack and starts posting one submission for each beer he drinks, ergo, the dupes increase with the frequency of his posting.
Dude, atoms have been known to be divisible for over 70 years now, your school must have some ancient books. Do they contain references to the Aether?
Also, if this bugs you, wait until you hear of symmetry, with its sparticles, squarks, and so on.
1. develop a device that creates antimatter
2. pair it with a process that tunnels the antimatter to a remote location
3. profit!
I'm ashamed.
Chris Knight: As you know, Mitch and I were working on the cyanide system. Well, eariler today it ate itself. But, these little set-backs are just what we need to take a giant step forward. Right, Kent? Needless to say, I was a little despondent about the melt down, but then, it the midst of my preparations for hari kiri, it came to me. It is possible to synthesize excited bromide in an argon matrix. It's an excimer frozen in its excited state.
Bodey: Th...That's impossible.
Knight: It's a chemical laser but in solid, not gaseous, form. Put simply, in deference to you, Kent, it's like lasing a stick of dynamite. As soon as we apply a field, we couple to a state, it is radiatively coupled to the ground state. I figure we can extract at least 10 to the 21st photons per cubic centimeter which will give one kilojoule per cubic centimeter at 600 nanometers, or, one megajoule per liter.
Imagine cutting shapes from foot-thick steel plate practically instantaneously.Or cutting I-beams to length in a small fraction of a second.
While the battlefield uses are sort of obvious, its civilian uses might wind up more profitable in the long run, assuming there is one.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Tell me If I am wrong: The super-laser beam lives for 160 ns, the speed of light is 299792458 m/s so in a nanosecond the beam runs along 0,3 meters and in 160 ns the beam dissapears at 47 meters. Hey! its very risky to shot this ray so near to the Death Star, only Skywalker can do this feat.
How is antimatter different than matter aside from it annihilating when it hits matter? Would it be possible to build things out of antimatter? i've never understood what they mean exactly, by ANTImatter. So i wonder is it actually MATTER in the way that matter is? Or is it something totally weird?
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