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LHC Scientists Create and Capture Antimatter

Velcroman1 writes "Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider have created antimatter in the form of antihydrogen, demonstrating how it's possible to capture and release it. The development could help researchers devise laboratory experiments to learn more about this strange substance, which mostly disappeared from the universe shortly after the Big Bang 14 billion years ago. Trapping any form of antimatter is difficult, because as soon as it meets normal matter — the stuff Earth and everything on it is made out of — the two annihilate each other in powerful explosions. 'We are getting close to the point at which we can do some classes of experiments on the properties of antihydrogen,' said Joel Fajans, a University of California, Berkeley professor of physics, and LBNL faculty scientist. 'Since no one has been able to make these types of measurements on antimatter atoms at all, it's a good start.'"

4 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. Anti-matter behaves as expected, like matter by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The core is negative/neutral mass and the orbit is positive mass. Naturally, anti-matter electrical conductors conduct positive particles rather than negative. The questions of behavior that need to be answered is what exactly causes i.e. electroconductivity. Reversing the charges, in theory, won't affect the behavior insomuch as you have X mobile particles and Y non-mobile particles setting up orbits that should be the same (the nature of electrical charge attraction doesn't change), so anti-copper should conduct positrons like copper conducts electrons etc. The reality... we don't know, of course.

    It would be a big thing if someone created anti-copper AND it didn't behave exactly like copper when supplied with an anti-potential from an anti-battery.

  2. No; "powerful explosions" belongs to literature by sznupi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    First, most of the energy released in matter-antimatter annihilation is carried away by neutrinos.

    Secondly...CERN covered this on one occasion:

    The inefficiency of antimatter production is enormous: you get only a tenth of a billion (10-10) of the invested energy back. If we could assemble all the antimatter we've ever made at CERN and annihilate it with matter, we would have enough energy to light a single electric light bulb for a few minutes. ...

    Can we make antimatter bombs?

    No. It would take billions of years to produce enough antimatter for a bomb having the same destructiveness as ‘typical’ hydrogen bombs, of which there exist more than ten thousand already.

    Sociological note: scientists realized that the atom bomb was a real possibility many years before one was actually built and exploded, and then the public was totally surprised and amazed. On the other hand, the public somehow anticipates the antimatter bomb, but we have known for a long time that it cannot be realized in practice.

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  3. Re:antihydrogen by John+Hasler · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Getting the anti-protons and anti-electrons to combine into a single atom that stays at a low enough energy level that it can be contained for a significant amount of time is hard, especially since it is neutral and can't be contained with magnetic fields.

    I believe you can, by manipulating the dipole moment. Not easy.

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  4. Re:Someone call Dr. Langdon... by interval1066 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Then again, I always keep my distance from the Vatican."

    Too bad, the Vatican is a warehouse of historical art and documents that span almost 20 centuries, from ancient Celtic gold captured by Roman Emperors to some of the most exquisite illuminated French manuscripts ever known. Sculpture by Michelangelo, paintings by Titian, medieval tryptics chased with gold filigree, original manuscripts by pagan authors such as Plato, Cato, and Virgil... really amazing stuff. But you'll never see it as you have obviously made the wise choice of avoiding Christian Ground Zero. They might zap you with their evil baptism rays. Good for you.

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