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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.'"
... for destroying the world in 2012.
Oh hey everybody, it's Tom Hanks!
is getting real close. But does it matter?
If I reply, will our comments annihilate each other?
IANAP.. but..
I think the temporary capture of antiprotons and antielectrons has been achieved before, since it is relatively easy. It is the significant-duration capture of antihydrogen (i.e. antiproton + antielectron, forming an electrically neutral 'anti-atom') which is new ( ? ). Please correct, and scold, me if I am wrong.
..then does that mean it doesn't matter? :-)
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Now if they could only create antiidiot we could release it and take care of most of the worlds problems.
This would have been a better joke if you said "last get" instead.
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.
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In the early moments of the big bang, there were supposedly equal amounts of matter and antimatter created. This promptly annihilated leaving behind whatever imbalance there was in the relative amounts. This leftover matter is what the universe is made up of now.
However, a particle and antiparticle won't annihilate if they do not come in contact with each other. If one half of the big bang were matter rich and the other half was antimatter rich, and were kept apart, then half the universe could be antimatter and half matter. Is there a way of detecting this?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
ALPHA project is NOT a part of LHC. It is one of many other project at CERN that does not have much to do with LHC.
Note that production and capture of antihydrogen is not new. There's been prior work trying to use it to test for possible CPT violations. See for example hussle.harvard.edu/~atrap/Papers/2010/AntihydrogenPhysicsToday.pdf, http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005APS..DPPFP1058V and http://www.physics.harvard.edu/Thesespdfs/speck.pdf.
Antiprotons are relatively low-energy phenomena, being produced at 1 GeV. The LHC is a HIGH-energy facility, using energies 7000 times higher. Using the LHC to make antiprotons would be ridiculous overkill and counter-productive, since the ALPHA experiment needs antihydrogen at rest. Not every experiment at CERN uses the LHC. In this case, the cool bit of machinery is the Antiproton Decelerator (AD) and ALPHA's magnetic trapping system.
If they really created antihydrogen, they should prove it by taking a photo.
We'll have to be extra cautious that they don't just take a photo of regular hydrogen and apply a negative filter to the image.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Once you get enough antimatter contained in one small area, it's not hard to release the containment field.
Sometimes, even little thing make big boom.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2010/11/17/antimatter-atoms/
Editors, please!
Stopped reading after the first sentence...
Scientists working on the big bang machine in Geneva have done the seemingly impossible: create, capture and release antimatter.
The "machine" in question does have a name, you know?
BBC News also has coverage,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11773791
Finally some truth to a Dan Brown novel.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I'm not trying to rag on Fox News here, but why link them and not CERN's press release page?
Clicky
No sig for you!!
How do you trap a neutral antiparticle?
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.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Wait, wut? Are you try to say, 'If man had been meant to mess with anti-matter, GOD would have given us anti-matter containment systems built into our hands!"? :)
check out the Mp3 Garbler I built!
LHC Scientists Create and Capture Antimatter
PETAM (People for the Ethical Treatment of Antimatter) are not going to be pleased with this. Especially the bits about physicists staging pit-bull style "dog fights" between matter and antimatter, and placing quantum mechanics based bets to the outcome of the duels.
Remember, children, "God does not play dice!"
And let that antimatter roam free! No capture, no antimatter!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM
It explains in easy to understand words what it does.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The article, although limited on scientific data, is interesting. It makes me wonder how much and at what rate they capture antimatter? What circumstances are required to ensure that antimatter is present to trap?
If one can readily trap antimatter you wouldn't need to store it long. Instead control matter antimatter collisions and harness the explosive power. What would it be called? an engine? a reactor? a generator? Hmmmmmm...
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
demonstrating how it's possible to capture and release it
Actually I think it shows a lot of forethought that they are trying to keep from depleting the local pool of Antimatter by trying to institute "Catch and Release" rules.
If more Sport Physicist follow suit, they are less likely to find government intervention and the need for Licenses before they go Colliding their own particles.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
...and we'll have Warp Drive! Huzzah!
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
A story about the LHC and you link to Fox News? Come on now...
Then at least disclose that it's a European experiment. We spent billions on it, credit where its due please. Americans generally work on the principle that if nothing is said about location, it's American. Quoting an American regarding the experiment reinforces this view.
todo - The developer's equivalent of confession: "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned..."
"what instance could MAN (instead of GOD) use this to do stuff with.?"
From TFA:
""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."
There you go. If there exists even the slightest possibility that something like this can be weaponized (and I'm not even pretending to be smart enough to make that call) you can be damn sure there will be no shortage of research into the manner..
Just look at the Manhattan project, atomic weapons had been theorized for a long time, but WW2 turned out to be the kind of spare-no-expense kick-in-the-pants motivator, that made them a reality, far faster than anyone (of those who even thought they were possible, which was by no means a unanimous assertion) had previously imagined...
"Isn't the possible massive explosion that could rip the universe apart a sign that maybe we should leave this one alone for awhile"
eh, we had some of the same fears about atomic weaponry, and its not like that stopped anyone...
Please use this link http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101117/full/468355a.html it was the original. Tired of the FOX News links.
Scientists have captured antimatter before. I recall an interview with a physicist (I believe Colbert Report) who mentioned they had antimatter captured before. Doing a quick Google search, I found references to captured antimatter going back to 2002: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1957-antimatter-atoms-captured-for-the-first-time.html
Wait, first they told me that the LHC was trying to make a dangerous black hole, and now they tell me they're trying to launch antimatter projectiles. I don't get it, are they trying to make a Romulan Warbird or the Starship Enterprise?
When have you caught so much anti-matter that releasing it would cause a serious problem? How much is too much?
All I want is a beam or bolt of antimatter that I can launch at my enemies and the occasional bird or squirrel. I'm guessing the beam or bolt would have to be encapsulated with something to prevent reaction with the atmosphere prior to hitting the target and I assume it would be some sort of energy field. So now let's do that so I can have my blaster!
Also... lightsaber? Where is my lightsaber?
Then at least disclose that it's a European experiment.
Well, the headline did start right off by saying it was the LHC. And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who knows that the LHC is in Europe.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
A bomb. I wonder how long it will take to produce it.
I am not a robot. I am a unicorn.
Don't.
Rather than sodium flush a little antihydrogen down the toilet.
News for nuffers. Stuff that antimatters.
They use the magnetic moment of the antihydrogen. They trap it for about 1/6 of a second, which isn't very long, considering we can trap charged antiparticles for weeks in Penning-Malmberg traps. But it's still impressive.
Actually, anti-hydrogen looks exactly like hydrogen, but with a goatee.
I misread that as goatse, and panicked!
Oddly enough, your comment still worked with my inadvertent substitution.
I think I've spent too much time on /. :-)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
In the beginning anti-matter and matter fused to create energy which resulted in human life.
The process of physicists using energy to separate matter and anti-matter is just the same process occurring in negative time.
If we see more and more of this, it will be proof that the universe is coming to an end.
Yep, it's on the way. It's a reverse process that will suck all the electricity out of every wire, home, office and factory and bring it all back to roost at the reactor for later use. However the anti time equation suggests that sooner and later have no meaning at all.
"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.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Now we just need to invent Warp Coils and Gene Roddenberry's triumph over all the nay-sayers will be complete. According to the Star Trek chronology, Zefram Cochrane invented the first warp drive in 2063, so this ability to generate anti-matter is right on the time-table.
All couples with the last name Cochrane should immediate start procreating and naming all their children "Zefram". Bedside audio tapes of theoretical physics are suggested "night-night" aids.
Could it at all be possible that during the big bang, equal amounts of matter and anti-matter were created.
Due to the huge explosion (ok big bang), matter went one way and the anti-matter the other way. trillions and trillions of lightyear away, anti-matter humans are trying to figure out what the F happened to all the matter.
"...I love how these articles talk about THEORIES like they are pure facts. "
Not facts, theories. You do however seem to be laboring under some false pretense that scientific method is some kind of ramshackle rim-shot affair, like it doesn't really work, and is only for people who study it. People like you show what an astounding divide exists between science and the lay populace. Not that Science hasn't tried to bridge that divide, People like Sagan and Hawking have tried to do it. Those effort obviously weren't enough. A theory isn't an idea that a person, say YOU, came up with while smoking dope one day and in your haze supposed that an atom in your thumb is like the Solar System.
Most theories are 90% fact. They are fact right up to the point that experiments can be devised to prove them, then there often comes a point where there is no experiment that can be performed to prove it. Take for example relativity; Einstein was able to show that light is bent by gravity because Arthur Eddington went to the North Pole to observe light from a star bent by an eclipse in 1919. Even that wasn't enough; when atomic clocks and jets were invented in the 1950's a further aspect of relativity was shown. In the field of physics, by the way, quantum theory is the most successful theory ever advanced, it explains 95% of every aspect of physics for the topics it covers.
This idea you uneducated wretches have that the empirical method is a bunch of guys in white coats talking about crap is just that, crap. You Don't Know What You're Talking About.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
How do we know that the universe is dominated by matter versus anti-matter? What is the scientific reason that we know that the next galaxy over isn't made completely of anti-matter versus matter?
The antimatter, for one, welcomes me as it's new overlord.
At http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/30577 you can read a slightly sarcastic piece about what it would take to hold the quantities that Dan Brown used in his books.
Nice wry write-up - I like the details..
Insert
So, then the Anti-Hydrogen bomb would be sort of an oxymoron then?
Could it at all be possible that during the big bang, equal amounts of matter and anti-matter were created.
No. It is one of the Sakharov conditions on the Big Bang. While your suggestion of "random" separation is technically possible the odds against it happening are so vanishingly small that it would be more reasonable to explain the extinction of the dinosaurs by spontaneous suffocation caused by no oxygen molecules entering any dinosaur's lungs just by "random chance".
Even if you ignore the odds of it happening then there would still have to be a border between the matter and anti-matter that would be devoid of mass and we don't see a band stretching throughout the universe like this nor do we see it in the cosmic microwave background. So not only is your theory overwhelmingly improbable it is inconsistent with data.
The bartender looks the neutron up and down and says, "For you? No charge."
Of course if the bartender had been a particle physicist and looked him up and down then he would have said: "Hey you're no neutron, you are a quark short. That'll be full charge for you, you pion!"
How do you trap a neutral antiparticle?
You don't (easily) but fortunately an atom is not a single particle but a system of two charged particles and so you can use atomic traps which rely on EM fields as well as absorption and emission of EM radiation.
And would it not be a CPT violation if it didn't, or would that only happen if the thing it was falling up away from was also antimatter? I don't see how they'll tell in this trap how gravity affects the stuff -- trapping forces are many G equivalent. But that's really the important question, not does it have the same visible spectra, which almost certainly, it does. And wha? Who said most of the energy of annihilation goes off as neutrinos? That's ignorant. e+ and e- colliding makes two gamma rays of 511 mev each. Protons, being much heavier and all, probably make quite the shower of particles created from the high energy photons. Which then decay. Some, but not most of the energy would go off in neutrinos. Just like in beta decay. And yes, I AM a physicist.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
Why not just make a container out of anti-matter? Problem solved.
... who thought he was a positron.
"Are you sure?", I asked.
"I'm positive".
*ducks*
No but I wish it were possible to annihilate all the inaccuracies in the story! Alpha has NOTHING to do with the LHC other than happening to be in the same lab. These guys need to get the anti-protons down to almost zero velocity so starting with the highest energy machine on the planet would be stupid.
In fact Alpha uses the Anti-proton Decelerator which uses the CERN Proton Synchrotron (PS) which is one of the low energy machines at CERN accelerating protons to only 25 GeV - which is so low in energy that the protons have to be accelerated by another machine, the SPS, before they can even be injected into the LHC for final acceleration!
negative first
zeroth
$ make available
When asked in interviews, the scientists very clearly say there are no practical applications of this research. On one hand, no one involved seems to have any pie-in-the-sky free energy speculation. On the other hand, it's pretty obvious that there's a conscious effort being undertaken not to talk about the elephant in the room. I suppose it should be comforting that antimatter research doesn't have a Leo Szilard.
Still we can be pretty sure that not everyone is watching this research with the idea that it is _entirely_ driven by pure scientific curiosity, as the LHC scientists make a point of mentioning.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Is there such thing as an anti-photon? If so, what would be the outcome of the collision of an anti-photon with a photosynthetically-reactive wavelength against chlorophyll in a plant?
Would the plant react typically and start making sugars, or would we look at destruction of the matter at that area?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
no they have the same rate of accuracy, of infinitely close to ~0
warning pointless sig
That's the last time anyone on Slashdot tricks me into clicking through to Faux News. Now I have to wash my computer.
ummmm, not quite, more like there needs to be a wee bit more research before we actually start playing with the stuff.
Electric and magnetic fields are just different ways to experience the same phenomenon. If you are moving relative to the charge (or if the quantity of charge is changing), you see both an electric field and a magnetic field. If you are not, you see only an electric field.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
From the article at Nature:
To trap just 38 atoms, the group had to run the experiment 335 times.
I'm guessing that the 38 atoms that they isolated were during different runs of the experiment.
Since we now have anti-matter, we need to get us some Photon Torpedos to use on our enemies.
Like most big physics done at CERN, ALPHA is a broad collaboration between many nations.
http://alpha.web.cern.ch/alpha/
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.