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NC State Creates Most Powerful Positron Beam Ever
eldavojohn writes "A fairly large breakthrough took place earlier this month with the most powerful man-made antimatter electron beam ever being created at North Carolina State University. Professor Hawari who worked on the project explains its benefits: 'The idea here is that if we create this intense beam of antimatter electrons — the complete opposite of the electron, basically — we can then use them in investigating and understanding the new types of materials being used in many applications.'"
Whatever you do, don't cross the streams...
My
So, will it make my Ironman watch run backwards? OR block out all neural activity?
I smell a sitcom!
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
If I can't have frickin' laser beams, I want positron beams!
Professor Hawari who worked on the project explains its benefits: 'The idea here is that if we create this intense beam of antimatter electrons -- the complete opposite of the electron, basically -- we can then use them in investigating and understanding the new types of materials being used in many applications.'"
He added: " We are not quite sure how long it will take to miniaturize the technology for shark mounted applications, but we expect this to be investigated thoroughly in the future"
Apparently outdoing some undisclosed reactor in Munich is about all they say.
Apparently in 1985 you couldn't walk into a store and buy plutonium but perhaps in 2015 you can buy antimatter.
So besides ghost busting, what does this thing do? In all seriousness TFA says that is allows microscopes to see stuff at an atomic level. I thought there were already microscopes out there that did that???
how soon can we affix these beams to sharks' heads?
Currently, there are approximately 25 universities across the United States with active nuclear reactors on campus
You know, when you've read as many science fiction books as I have, this shit is a liiiitle creepy.
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
Reminds me of the positron rifle from the 6th episode of Evangelion.
In seemingly unrelated news, Duke University ceases to exist, somehow evaporated by a wave of unknown positron emission energy. But little seem to care, since Duke sucks anyways!
So if you shot a powerful positron beam at something and also shot a powerful electron beam at it also, would you have a continuous antimatter explosion at the crossover point?
I'd like my doctor to have one of these new fangled ray gun thingies just in case I become infected with some of that super duper bacteria I keep hearing about.
Isn't Data's neural network positronic?
I call first in line to meet Lor!
How is the beam manipulated? doesn't it cause an explosion if it touches normal particles? can it be used as a weapon? as fuel? how is the beam created?
"Pure anti-proton. Absolutely pure!"
--Commodore Decker
I thought in order to actually have "anti-matter" you needed whole anti-atoms. I think the proper term is simply anti-electrons. (Could be wrong in my pedanticism)
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
I've seen Scotty create beams of antimatter with two phasers and a tricorder, big whoop.
NC State is using the frickin huge antimatter electron beam to create huge frickin sharks to which they will attach aforementioned frickin lazer beam.
Can we get one on a shark's head? Is that too much to ask? Can someone throw a dog a 'friggin bone?
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
The president of NC State has just announced the construction of the new FORTRESS OF DOOM Hall which will house both the Physics Department and the Department of Uralic-Altaic Languages.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
...We'll cross the streams.
Insert joke here about Dirty Hawari with the Most Powerful Postitron Beam in the world, and can blow a grad student's head clean off...
I know there's a good joke here, but it's not coming to me. -sigh- Some days you have it, some days you don't. :)
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I won't be impressed until scientists are able to create an inverted tachyon pulse that solves any problems caused by spatial anomalies.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
As a NCSU alum (class of 2005), I'm impressed that they've got the earth's largest antimatter beam, but I think but I'd be even more impressed if they finally got the majority of professors to put their class syllabus online.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
OK, this article is useless without some mention of how powerful this beam is. They say that the reactor itself puts out 5MW, but nothing of the beam itself.
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
I guess that I'm now officially paranoid. I misread the title as "NC State Police Create Most Powerful Positron Beam Ever". I then started to imagine the inevitable YouTube videos.
Approximately? Who the heck couldn't count to 25?
Most newsmen (judging by their use of the term "many" in place of actual integers - even very small ones - in most of their stories.
Either that or they think their audience can't understand numbers greater than three or so.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I've created an intense anti-matter beam so powerful that it could evaporate half of New New York if it was accidentally activated. So just remember not to press this big red button!
-------
"Getting the brain out is the easy part. The hard part is getting the brain out."
-Parallel Universe Dr. Hubert Farnsworth
"After they get exposure to the reactor and the facilities online at their own universities, many of them become excited about the possibility of coming to NC State for hands-on experience."
Maybe the exposure to the reactor, is just causing their atoms to excite.
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
Best. Beam. Ever.
My university is not cool enough to have a real reactor. All they got is these steam tunnels and a bunch of blue-glowing water!
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Just imagine a beowulf cluster of those!
"'The idea here is that if we create this intense beam of antimatter electrons the complete opposite of the electron, basically we can then use them in investigating and understanding the new types of materials being used in many applications.'"
They'd also be able to detect cloaked Romulan vessels!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
"'The idea here is that if we create this intense beam of antimatter electrons...we can then use them in investigating and understanding the new types of materials being used in many applications.'"
Translation:
"So. what should we blow up today, boys???"
for hunting
You insensitive clod!
I took a class that involved going to the University of Texas' learning reactor. To get in the front door, one had to get buzzed in by someone behind a desk. To get to the controls or the reactor, one had to get past several security measures and some very solid metal doors. The first time the prof took us back there, he warned us that the door could only be open for 3 minutes. I asked him what happened if that time was exceeded, and he said that a SWAT team would be there within five.
I certainly wouldnt want to be anywhere near a large positron beam hitting electrons. They don't explode... Instead you get a number of things happening:
1) Positron + electron = 2 gamma rays/
2) A missing electron (meaning free radical, and/or an electrical current).
So basically, a positron destroys an electron and creates two ionizing photons.
So think of this less as an explosion and more as a giant light-bulb spewing gamma rays. Cool, but you want to be somewhere else.
Note that the current ideas for positronic rocket engines involve ablating material via the gamma rays.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Finally something we can use to clear the streets around the Belltower. No man I DON'T SMOKE and I DON'T have any SPARE change.
NWU Grad student: We got to get these two together!
Prof. Hawari: I think that would be extremely dangerous.
[enter stage left: Bill Murray]
[exit stage outta here: Snaggle Puss]
Wusses - this is just what I've been needing for my planet eating Doomsday Machine.
Well, that and Neutronium.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Wouldn't an anti-electron beam crossed with a particle beam create energy?
The game.
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
...by NC state researchers.
the beam was not 'powerful' it was intense. And then they don't even state the luminosity. Next they will write the press release in crayons.
Are you saying that a positron generator that accelerates positrons to about the same energy of your CRT television creates a "more powerful" beam than the billion-dollar linear accelerators in the world that reach into the GeV range (a million times more energetic)?
as the next target for positron emissions testing.
I just want to find out if the little shit will still bark it's yap off at midnight while it's glowing in the dark.
What happens if you make a CRT that uses positrons instead of electrons. Will it suck up light, instead of emitting light? That'd be so cool: instant darkness!
-- Cheers!
Which do you mean?
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
If you have 30 USD, you can read their full performance report. Without paying, even the abstract might tell you something.
I wish that they would not make any more nuclear weapons, it just makes the world even more unstable. Hopefully, President Colbert will reunify the two Carolinas and bring peace to the region.
"NC State Creates Most Powerful Positron Beam Ever" - is the "Ever" really necessary? I hate that. I think apple started it, but it causes me great pain. What is wrong with "NC State Creates Most Powerful Positron Beam" - I mean, doesn't that already kind of imply "ever".
Sweet christ what the hell is wrong with people.
I am running Ubuntu right now, and I like it. If you used BitTorrent to download 7.10, you may have received a few chunks from my machine, because I downloaded Ubuntu 7.10 as soon as it came out, and I have had my machine seeding it ever since, except for the few hours it took Sunday evening for me to update my own machine from Ubuntu 7.04 to Ubuntu 7.10. I now work one block from the Blue Cube, for a start-up in the solar power field. I am an analog and RF design engineer and a computer network wrangler. You can reach me directly by email to rgetsla {at} yahoo [dot] com.
An analog gray hair frantically clinging to the trailing edge of technology.
...I can't believe that nobody has tagged this article "realignthedeflector"
They haven't been able to synchronize the phase harmonics of the polaron emitter with the subspace transients, because they mixed up a C++ template definition in the J++/Perl# interface to the holodeck safety protocols trying to document the current TSA handbook for compatibility with NAFTA copyright laws. If only they'd written it in Lisp!
'The idea here is that if we create this intense beam of antimatter electrons -- the complete opposite of the electron, basically -- we can then use them in investigating and understanding the new types of materials being used in many applications.'
What new materials? Beings used in which "many applications"? Does this sentence strike anyone else as odd besides me? If "new types" of materials are already used, aren't they already understood and manufactured etc.?
"After they get exposure to the reactor and the facilities online at their own universities, many of them become excited"
... damn it, we need a catchy acronym...
What's the emission spectrum of an excited undergrad? Are they bosons or leptons? Can you maintain a population of excited candidates and trigger coherent emissions? My god, think of the possibilities. What should we call it? Grant Amplification by Stimulated Publication of
They're more than 100,000 times as "ultra" as "ultra-violet".
FPA "ultra-violent".
"There was me, Hawari, and my droogs, and we sat in the SLAC lunchroom trying to make up our razudoks about what to do about the evening..."
P.S. Possible weapon implications? Ask Kent about mirror.
This guy's name, Ayman Hawiri, is very close to Ayman al-Zawahiri. Coincidence, I think not. Da...da.....daaaaaa....
That would explain the brownout that rebooted my computer in downtown Raleigh...
Give this fellow some humor and insightful points for finally showing that Microsoft Vista is a weapon of mass destruction! Maybe now we can ban it here and go back to XP...or better yet, move to LINUX/UNIX...
Supreme Granter of Doctor of Obviology Letters ("A FIRM Command of the Obvious")
> "The idea here is that if we create this intense beam of antimatter electrons -- the
> complete opposite of the electron, basically -- we can then use them in investigating
> and understanding the new types of materials being used in many applications."
The Professor continues, "And watch the screen here. That's a student standing talking with his friends completely on the other side of campus. In a second you'll see him jump as his ass starts burning."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"We're no. -1! We're no. -1!"
I can use it to make an anti-television
you all remember that scene from hl2:ep2? with the giant vortex and gaping portal in the sky linking our world to a parallel dimension full of vermicious knids just waiting to eat our brains? yea well that's going to happen, it's just a matter of time with all of this advanced research being done..
And we got warp drive!