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.'"

Comments

Obligatry

[Avitor]

Whatever you do, don't cross the streams...

Re:Obligatry

[cytg.net]

"The reactor is a huge recruiting tool," Hawari said. "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.""

- excited or radient ?

Re:Obligatry

[opieum]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Antimatter the same crap that Star Trek says is bad. Malon Frieghters (people in hazmat suits without helmets real smart bunch there) polluted space with that stuff in Voyager, Warp Cores on starships explode when antimatter leaks and all that fun stuff and here we are making laser beams of the shit? Yep I see lots more military applications there than I do "Scientific"

Re:Obligatry

[snoyberg]

Yes, Star Trek says it's dangerous, therefore it MUST be a bad idea to investigate it...

And anyway, as a Trekkie, I can tell you that you're completely wrong; they use "anti-matter" drives. According to Star Trek, anti-matter is just as "bad" as gasoline: if something bad happens they both blow up.

Re:Obligatry

[Nefarious Wheel]

"...many of them become excited..."

Do the students emit photons when they relax?

Re:Obligatry

[markov_chain]

Definitely the latter. "The students practically radiate with curieosity" "The students' eyes scintillate with joy"

Re:Obligatry

[petermgreen]

antimatter is nasty in the sense that when it hits matter it releases lots of energy. weight for weight it would make nukes look tame.

However antimatter does not to our knowlage occour in significant quantities naturally and it isn't feasible to make enough of it to be dangerous (we have to make it from energy and I don't think the process is very efficiant).

Re:Obligatry

[obeythefist]

Nah that was Theta radiation dude. Whatever that is. Go brush up on your particle of the month. Some people here wouldn't know a chronatron from a tribble.

Also, when do we get the stories of the police using weaponised versions of the antimatter gun on students?

"Don't positron me bro!"

Re:Obligatry

[guywcole]

According to the Stephen-Boltzmann law, yes.

Hey, did I just hear something fly over my head?

Re:Obligatry

[love-blood-rhetoric]

So, I would really like to know the characteristics of this beam. Are they creating and destroying positrons with the highest flux in the world? Here at CHESS, we run a beam of positrons as well as electrons in CESR with an energy of 5GeV @ 240mA. Granted they are recirculating through the ring, but the instantaneous power of this is [nearly and for effect] 1.21 GW. However, it if one were to direct this at a target, you would destroy the entire beam in nanoseconds. The sustained power would be that which the gun and linac can provide which is still huge (10's of MeV @ 10's of mA), albeit for 10's of minutes before the gun must cool.

I do wish the article gave more information. If someone has some, please post it.

Opposite of electrons...

[newgalactic]

So, will it make my Ironman watch run backwards? OR block out all neural activity?

Re:Opposite of electrons...

[monkeyboythom]

Actually, it blocks out all positive thinking. Sheesh! Some scientist you are...

Omitted text from the article

[Anonymous Coward]

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"

Little useful info in TFA

[burtosis]

Do the news reporters talk to the scientists anymore? Or does the average joe just not care?

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.

Re:Little useful info in TFA

[burtosis]

http://positrons.physics.lsa.umich.edu/nanopos/Publications/Reprints/Annual%20Rev%20Materials%20Research%20PAS%202006.pdf Used mostly for characterizing porus materials. Fun read if you find materials or nuclear science interesting, however perhaps too boring to put forth as informations in TFA.

Jesus Christ in a Chicken Basket

[Sneakernets]

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.

Re:Jesus Christ in a Chicken Basket

[smussman]

While that may be true in some places, it's not true everywhere. http://news.uns.purdue.edu/html4ever/2005/051014.Reactor.ABC.html

Re:Jesus Christ in a Chicken Basket

[Wilson_6500]

You know, when you've read as many science fiction books as I have, this shit is a liiiitle creepy.

Why? These are usually research reactors, from what I understand. They're not meant to power cities; they're not meant to run at a profit. They're meant to generate some types of isotopes for nuclear medicine students, and to give the nuclear engineers something to do.

I've read a lot of science facts, and that's why this shit doesn't feel that creepy at all. I don't mean to single you out, of course, and there are plenty of valid security and OSHA-like concerns at pretty much any nuclear facility; the public's allergy to anything remotely involving the word "radiation," however, is something that could stand a lot of improvment. The dangers of nuclear science are more to do with mismanagement and a lazy operating culture--which are thankfully not fundamental physical issues but rather human ones that can potentially be fixed.

And, frankly, I'd rather the public learn about nuclear science from scientists rather than science fiction authors.

Re:Jesus Christ in a Chicken Basket

[BlueParrot]

Yes, and one of the news magazine shows (20/20, 60 minutes, I forget which) had an article about the complete lack of security at these reactors. Often, the security is a grad student with next to no sleep.

Did they also mention that these reactors have a very low power output and that you couldn't cause a meltdown even if you tried? Even for a dirty weapon the material in these reactors would be rather useless. You can find more dangerous chemicals in your local paint shop.

Having said that, I think we should ban the nuclear family on health and safety grounds. IT'S NUCLEAR! THINK OF THE CHIDLREN!

Re:Jesus Christ in a Chicken Basket

[clarkcox3]

I think you mean NUKYULAR!

Re:Jesus Christ in a Chicken Basket

[olddotter]

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.

This isn't a little creepy. Idiocracy is a bit creepy. Manna is a bit creepy. And this Wired story is down right scary and creepy. If we continue down this path, then we are well on our way to being a nation of idiots.

Re:Jesus Christ in a Chicken Basket

[TFer_Atvar]

Actually, there are 32. I wrote my senior thesis on this topic. That number is actually down from the late 1970s, when there were nearly 60. As a previous commenter said, they're virtually all research reactors, and most are of the TRIGA design designed by General Atomics. When the engineers and scientists went about designing it in the 1950s, they asked themselves how they could design a reactor that was completely accident-proof. Even if you wanted to melt down a TRIGA, you couldn't. Yanking every control rod fully out of the reactor will cause a spark in neutron activity before the water moderates the reaction back down. NC State had the first collegiate nuclear reactor in the United States, before even the TRIGA design. Rest assured, they know what they're doing.

Re:Jesus Christ in a Chicken Basket

[644bd346996]

Note: I've been in the PULSTAR reactor room several times.

Nuclear reactors generally pose two threats. The first is that they will get out of control. That can't happen at NC State. By the time the water gets hotter than bathwater, alarms would be going off. The reactor isn't allowed to get at all close to boiling.

The other risk comes from the radioactive substances being stolen. Ignoring the fact that the stuff in the reactor is the least accessible stuff in the building, you would need lethal weapons and scuba gear to get significant quantities out of the reactor room. Getting the stuff off campus would be even harder.

There is a much bigger risk of somebody raiding the chemistry labs for chemical weapons materials.

Re:Jesus Christ in a Chicken Basket

[rcani]

Honestly, stealing reactor materials from the Pulstar probably wouldn't be that hard. When you think about the amount of time spent planning the 9/11 attacks, a couple of semesters to become a reactor operator wouldn't be that big a deal. or there are others experiments going on in the reactor bay, so I assume the people running those experiments have access. Once you have physical access to the reactor you wouldn't need weapons or SCUBA gear, particularly assuming you don't mind death from radiation poisoning/cancer. just pull the rods out and put them in a box. then stroll off campus.

(lawyer note: I don't recommend this, you will probably get caught and spend the rest of your life in jail, plus it's just plain a bad idea)

Re:Jesus Christ in a Chicken Basket

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's how I know that, unlike me, you aren't an NCSU NE graduate student:

1.) The fuel rods are something you can just "remove." This action poses some purely physical difficulties- they're meters underwater, bathed in a deadly neutron flux, and have to be removed by tools taking a lot of time.
2.) Monitors at access points would detect something being removed and sound alarms.
3.) You don't really get to be alone with the reactor for any period of time worth mentioning.
4.) Fuel rods aren't the attractive target people think they are.
5.) Becoming a reactor operator and being allowed access to the PULSTAR directly involves more than just taking a few classes- security post 9/11 is much greater. Undergraduates aren't allowed to have keys to the classroom building anymore, let alone the reactor. There are things called background checks by the way.

Re:Jesus Christ in a Chicken Basket

[QuantumPion]

Well the Chernobyl disaster happened because of two major things: a) a poorly designed reactor that was unstable by nature and b) reactor operators that violated procedures and created an unsafe configuration. TMI happened because of two different things: a) a defective valve that other nuclear plants had problems with and knew was finicky but more importantly b) poorly trainer reactor operators that took actions which damaged the reactor core because of their lack of understanding about the plant. None of these four factors apply to university research reactors. The reactors are INHERENTLY safe, meaning that because of the way they are configured and designed, there is no possible way, either by operator intervention or equipment failure, that they could be seriously damaged. By the way, IAANE.

I for one . . .

[cashman73]

I for one welcome our new Tarheel Overlords! :-)

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!

Re:I for one . . .

[newgalactic]

btw - NC State is the Wolfpack, not Tarheel's (UNC). But they also hate Duke, so your headline still works.

Re:I for one . . .

[gregoryb]

Tarheel? Thems fightin' words, son! It's WOLFPACK...

Re:I for one . . .

[Ilan Volow]

I think a more apropos headline would be:

"Several UNC students carrying buckets of carolina blue paint have been missing since the big UNC win last night. In seemingly unrelated news, this morning NCSU campus police found several strange-looking piles of ash by the Free Expression Tunnel."

Don't cross the beams!

[Derling Whirvish]

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?

Re:Don't cross the beams!

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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?

Kinda. It's more like a gamma-ray (and neutrino) light source. The electron-positron annihilation releases a tad over a MeV mainly as two photons that fly off in opposite directions - plus a neutrino, so the photons are somewhat under half the energy each.

Think of it as an x-ray tube - without the vacuum tube - but with the power supply, instead of being in the kilovolt range, cranked up to whatever the beam voltage is plus an extra half-million volts or so.

Also, if you have a target you don't really need the electron beam. Just ground it well enough that it doesn't accumulate enough positive voltage to deflect the positron beam to somewhere else.

Re:Don't cross the beams!

[Ungrounded Lightning]

But with an electron beam ... you could potentially create a floating point of light?

Naw. It would have to hit something to glow. And it wouldn't be much of a beam with an acceleration voltage in the single-digit volts needed to produce visible light when the electrons slam into something.

As for trying to make a middle-of-the-air display by intersecting electron and positron beams: While half-MeV gamma-ray photons count as "light" they don't count as "visible light" (unless the light is really bright and an unfocused, all-over-the-retina, dying-cell sensation counts as "visible"). They're more than 100,000 times as "ultra" as "ultra-violet".

Use it on drug resistant bacteria

[cryfreedomlove]

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.

Re:Ghostbusters!!

[kebes]

Electron microscopes can already image at the atomic level, but a positron microscope has advantages because it can give complimentary information (e.g. about the positions of atomic vacancies). You can also use positron beams for PALS (Positron Annihilation Lifetime Spectroscopy), which is a powerful tool for determining the distribution of sizes in (nano-scale) voids in materials (difficult to measure by any other technique). It's also worth remembering that PET scans used in medicine involves a positron-emitting chemical injected into the patient.

There are probably a whole bunch of other experiments that positrons would be great for performing, but intense positron sources are not readily available. The development of more intense positron sources will certainly be welcomed by the scientific community, as it may allow previously unimagined types of measurements.

How is the beam manipulated?

[master_p]

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?

Re:How is the beam manipulated?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

How is the beam manipulated?

Like an electron beam - with electric and/or magnetic fields. (But because the particles are positive you have to use the reverse of the fields you'd use on electrons.)

doesn't it cause an explosion if it touches normal particles?

It causes a spot of gamma-ray (and neutrino) "light" emission. Kinda like an x-ray tube with a half-million volts between the electrodes (minus the vacuum bottle).

can it be used as a weapon?

If you have a BIG truck to carry the swimming-pool reactor around. B-)

as fuel?

No. You'd need to trap the antimatter to use it later - and to trap any significant amount you'd have to make anti-matter neucei to counter (most of) the anti-electrons' mutual repulsion. Otherwise you'd be spending far more power holding it in than it would ever produce. That means making at LEAST anti-protons, a much more ambitious task (over 1,800 times as hard if you're just counting energy per particle).

Re:How is the beam manipulated?

[LinearBob]

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, or SLAC, generates and accelerates electron and positron beams (and when needed, polarized or spin oriented beams) for colliding beam and fixed target experiments. SLAC has literally hundreds of dipole, quadrapole, and sextupole electromagnets placed along their accelerator, beam lines, and storage rings, all for focusing and directing their charged particle beams. If the center of mass of colliding electron and positron beams is high enough (at a collision energy called a "resonance") new particles will be created from the combined beam energies. During the 1990's, SLAC accelerated electrons and positrons to approximately 49 Giga Electron Volts (or GeV) each with their accelerator. After the two beams drifted in evacuated beam lines away from the accelerator, they were directed such that the electron beam and the positron beam approached an interaction point in the center of a large particle detector called SLD, from opposite sides. In the detector, the two beams would collide, creating new chargeless particles called Z-Zero or Z-Naught particles, with a collision energy of about 95.5 GeV. The Z-Zero, before it decays, is about one half as heavy as a silver atom, but quickly decays into a lot of smaller fragments, some charged and others not charged. The mass of that Z-Zero particle represents the direct conversion of the accelerator's energy into matter.

http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/vvc/detectors/sld.html

In the diagram shown in the link above, look for the e- and e+ labels. Those represent the electron (e-) and positron (e+) beams entering the SLD detector from opposite sides. In the center of the SLD detector is a small cylindrical piece called a Vertex Detector. The center of the vertex detector (a silicon CCD device about the size of a soft drink can with several million pixels in three concentric layers) is where SLAC's electrons actually collided with positrons. The parts of the detector around the Vertex detector are like the layers of an onion. Each layer gathers a different kind of data about the collisions that took place inside the vertex detector at the interaction point. There are a lot of very sophisticated electronics in the layers of all particle detectors, but all of the electronics have one purpose, to gather information about the decay fragments coming from the electron/positron collisions so the events that took place during and immediately after the collision can be reconstructed and analyzed with very sophisticated computers.

Beginning in 1998, SLAC began an experiment called the asymmetric B-meson factory, or "B Factory" for short. In the B Factory, the electron beams run at a little over 9 GeV beam energy, while the positron beams run at only about 3 GeV. Both colliding beams run at very high currents, on the order of two amperes in the electron storage ring, and three amperes in the positron storage ring. The collision of these two high current beams produces millions of B mesons, each with a residual momentum (due to the asymmetric beam energies) that makes it possible for the particle physicists to study more effectively how those B mesons decayed.

Here is a link to more information about "Storage Rings" and their electromagnets:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_ring

And here are links to three of SLAC's web pages, where you can learn more about colliding beam physics. BaBar is name of the particle detector used to study their decaying B Mesons, and PEP-II is the storage ring collider used to make those B Mesons.

The PEP-II storage ring collider is at: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/grp/ad/ADPEPII/ADPEPII.html

The BaBar detector is at: http://www-public.slac.stanford.edu/babar/

And SLAC's main web page (the first web page in t

Re:How is the beam manipulated?

[Nefarious Wheel]

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, or SLAC, generates and accelerates ...

Brilliant and informative post (used up all my mod points yesterday -- bugger!)

One observation however deserves expansion, I believe. The object ...The center of the vertex detector (a silicon CCD device about the size of a soft drink can reminds me of how the original cloud chamber reaction detector was inspired by a glass of beer, or rather the cavitation of bubbles within the glass of beer (not that beer can't be inspring on it's own, of course). This discovery was loosely dramatised in a movie by Yahoo Serious by a depiction of young Einstein splitting the beer atom in the chook shed out back. Thus I'm certain the vertex chamber described above must be the size of a beer can, not a soft drink can, in honour of the late esteemed Mme.Curie's boyfriend and co-inventor of Rock & Roll, as fine a Tasmanian as you will ever meet (disclaimer -- both of my children are Tasmanian, so I may be a little biased).

You will excuse me I trust, I need to crack another tinnie (hmmm...Inspiration for another metric -- the PicoTinnie, amount of energy absorbed by one of these collectors).

Re:How is the beam manipulated?

[LinearBob]

Thank you for your kind remarks.

I used to work at SLAC, and I got to know something about how the whole machine worked and what we (as a member of the team who made it work) were doing. You are 100% correct about beer and bubble chambers. At one time SLAC had a huge bubble chamber filled with liquid hydrogen (as I recall, I could be wrong). They also had a huge cloud chamber, and even a very large spark chamber, and giant solenoid magnets around those chambers, to make charged particles leave curved tracks. Back then, they photographed each pulse of the accelerator as seen in the bubble chamber, the cloud chamber, or the spark chamber (something like 5 to 10 pulses per second) on black and white movie film. They then had teams of people studying those films, frame by frame, looking for "interesting events". I'm sure the folks doing this visual analysis rapidly developed eye strain. I'm also sure the development of the particle detector (as represented by SLD) was a great improvement, both because the experimental machinery could run faster, and because computers could do the data analysis much faster and more accurately than people.

Although I am no longer working for SLAC, I always thought SLAC was a great place to work. There was so much history there that I could see and touch, and I sometimes got to talk with the people who were there when exciting discoveries were made. SLAC was where quarks were first observed in the form of three small (but hard) pits in the middle of a large squishy thing called a proton. They made this discovery by studying the scattering of some high speed electrons shot into a tank of liquid hydrogen. They then shot the same high speed electron beam into a tank of liquid deuterium. Deuterium has one proton and one neutron in its nucleus. To derive what the neutron looked like, they subtracted out what the scattering effect was from liquid hydrogen (which has only a proton in it's nucleus) and from that concluded that neutrons also were large squishy things with three hard pits in the middle, just like protons.

SLAC and the team that performed this high speed electron scattering experiment won a Nobel Prize for their work.

SLAC is also where the quark theory was tested in one of the first storage rings called SPEAR, earning SLAC another Nobel Prize. The Tau particle was found there, too, although the tau had been recorded but not recognized in other places. The discovery of the tau earned SLAC their third Nobel Prize.

While I worked there, my email and newsgroup signature line was, "Nobel Prizes R Us!"

She can't take much more of this!

[HaeMaker]

I've seen Scotty create beams of antimatter with two phasers and a tricorder, big whoop.

Re:So who will mount these on sharks?

[Foobar of Borg]

Jesus Christ, dude. Will you please let this fucking "joke" die?

In Soviet Russia, joke fucks YOU!

uh o

[moogied]

The reactor is a huge recruiting tool," Hawari said. "After they get exposure to the reactor and the facilities online at their own universities, many of them become excited" My god.. there making mutants.

I have a radical idea...

[PixelScuba]

...We'll cross the streams.

Re:I have a radical idea...

[jollyreaper]

...We'll cross the streams. No, don't. The pee goes everywhere.

I'm not impressed

[gordgekko]

I won't be impressed until scientists are able to create an inverted tachyon pulse that solves any problems caused by spatial anomalies.

Useless without...

[clarkcox3]

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.

Re:Antimatter electron?

[Nefarious Wheel]

Sigh... such a lack of precision today. Nothing anti-matters anymore.

Yes, positrons are considered anti-matter. But you can call it what you want in your own Jeffries tubes.

Re:Hmmm...

[Bravoc]

Hehe - I got it!

Let's fill this guys house with a whole shitload of unpopped popcorn see... and then we can take this beam see... and like point the beam at it and like... er... no, wait a minute

Not Quite

[el_munkie]

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.

Re:most newsmen

[zifferent]

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.

Really! In "most" of their stories they use the term "many" in place of apparently uncounted small numbers. Wonders never cease.