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Physicists Build Bigger 'Bottles' For Antimatter
intellitech writes "Once regarded as the stuff of science fiction, antimatter — the mirror image of the ordinary matter in our observable universe — is now the focus of laboratory studies around the world. While physicists routinely produce antimatter with radioisotopes and particle colliders, cooling these antiparticles and containing them for any length of time is another story. Clifford Surko, a professor of physics at UC San Diego, who is constructing what he hopes will be the world's largest antimatter container, said physicists have recently developed new methods to make special states of antimatter in which they can create large clouds of antiparticles, compress them and make specially tailored beams for a variety of uses."
Can they be pure antiproton? Absolutely pure?
Antimatter has been known and studied since the 1930s or so. I suspect that any science fiction that included antimatter as a subject was written during or after that time. I hate stupid /. headlines.
I got me a couple a 40's.
Beams of Pure Anti Matter!
"...make specially tailored beams for a variety of uses."
Read: blowing stuff up.
I love science!
Idiots are going to blow us all to Kingdom Come. You know this is just the first step in making a planet buster bomb.
So could you make anti-nuclear waste, and combine it with nuclear waste, end up with lots of energy and no mess? I suppose it could be any anti-matter, just use nuclear waste and any other undesirable stuff for the "matter" side of the equation.
Woot, go UCSD!
Ushering in the apocalypse since 1960!
We did a lot of nuke and miltech stuff, especially during the Vietnam War era. I didn't get to do much cool stuff when I was there, just an interference resistant videoconferencing system for soldiers in the field, and some work with severed rabbit hearts kept alive and beating in a vitrious solution...
The Red Shoe was apparently the 4th sign of the Apocalypse, and the Stuart Art collection is rumoured to have another piece as well, though gazing upon it is rumoured to induce permanent insanity.
This is sooo easy actually. You just use tachyons and Geordi's visor with a quantum entaglement garage door opener.
Tiger Blooded Bi-Winning Machine
...they can create large clouds of antiparticles, compress them and make specially tailored beams for a variety of uses."
And mad scientists all over the world rejoice at the thought of building their first orbital, antimatter death ray.
On a less sinister note, if they can guide an anti- beam in a controlled manner to impact a regular beam they could take the first steps towards some sort of epic anti-matter based propulsion system.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
I assume this means that they've also perfected the use of di-lithium? and, I can't believe that I'm the first one in this bunch to mention dilithium..
How much antimatter do you need to make a bomb that will, say, take down an medium-to-high-rise apartment complex?
Once the technology to create and contain antimatter indefinitely is available AND is small enough to fit on a tabletop, how long before some terrorists buys a condo and sets up a "slow bomb" that will detonate in 10 or 20 years, after it's created and stored enough antimatter to take out the building when it goes boom?
OK, maybe he's okay if it doesn't take out the building, he just wants to scare people, so he buys 10 condos around town and 10 years later there's 10 explosions and 10 severely damaged buildings staggered seemingly randomly over the course of a month, and everyone is wondering "OMG, does my neighbor have a bomb in the basement?"
Of course, by then we won't be saying OMG, but I digress.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Get a vat of antimatter, and throw it at a landfill. Storage problem solved. Who cares about "logistics." It's science motherfucka's.
Anti-proton wanders through normal matter and hits a proton. Boom, 2 anti-protons gone, lots of energy created. The atom the proton was in not only lost a proton but its nucleus may be shattered as well. Depending on the atom, this may result in a net release or absorption of energy.
In any case, I wouldn't want to be a nearby atom.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Will it a positron beam cut through my pile of neutron-star matter?
More seriously, will it cut through muonic atoms that have no electrons?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Ushering in the apocalypse since 1960!
The first 50+ years were just for practice!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
if they can guide an anti- beam in a controlled manner to impact a regular beam
Don't cross the beams. Trust me. It will be bad.*
*Blatant copyright violation.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Speaking for the antimatter, I believe that there is a misconception. We don't appreciate being called the "anti" matter. We are the other-matter to you. From our perspective, you are the antimatter! You don't like it very much when someone calls YOU antimatter do you. I wish we could all just get along but it was not meant to be. We will continue to annihilate any of you that try to contact us. Please! Just leave us alone!!!!
Thank You
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
Can they mount the anti-matter beam emitters on sharks? That would be awesome.
You just won first place in a retard contest.
I witness this first hand; the first one was built in the 1980s in NYC. Quite simple really. Load a trap here, open, unlock the system. Insert the trap, release, close, lock the system. Set your entry grid, neutralize your field and... the light is green, the trap is clean..
58 comments on the topic of anti-matter and not one Star Trek reference. Suddenly I feel very old.
Well up above the tropostrata
There is a region stark and stellar
Where, on a streak of anti-matter
Lived Dr. Edward Anti-Teller.
Remote from Fusion's origin,
He lived unguessed and unawares
With all his antikith and kin,
And kept macassars on his chairs.
One morning, idling by the sea,
He spied a tin of monstrous girth
That bore three letters: A. E. C.
Out stepped a visitor from Earth.
Then, shouting gladly o'er the sands,
Met two who in their alien ways
Were like as lentils. Their right hands
Clasped, and the rest was gamma rays.
-- Harold P Furth
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
What could possibly go wrong?
I'm sure there's a temperature below which a mixture of matter and antimatter would be stable, but I haven't a clue as to what it is (other than that it is likely to be low).
Might be some really interesting chemistry here...
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Well, regardless of moderation. I thought this was funny.
This has been discussed many times here. It goes something like this: Carter [or whoever] made an executive order that says we can't use the stuff, because, in doing so, we would be able to make more nuclear weapons material or something. So, the stuff is really useful, but we aren't legally allowed to use it. So it is only waste in a legal sense. tl;dr if this was China [or some other developing country or France probably] we would be using it. Also, all of the above was reconstructed from my memory of barely read posts about this, so don't take it as gospel, but it should be enough to help you find the real answer on google or something.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Russians down bottles of vodka, lone jocks in the wilderness down bottles of Solo, but physicists down bottles of antimatter. Now who's da man, eh?
I met Cliff at a conference last year, he's really friendly and down-to-earth, perfectly happy to answer questions from a foolish young PhD student. I ended up writing a simulation that seems to work perfectly for one of the earlier versions of his 'bottles'.
The 'Surko trap' is very common in the positron scattering experiment world, by the way. We use them here, for example. He's a household name in this particular niche.
"I never thought I'd see a resonance cascade, let alone create one."
First they burn books, then they burn people.
In space no one can hear the Star Trek reference whooshing over their heads.
Damn it. I wrote the GP. It was the first time I ever got first post. I made a cool Star Trek original series reference and the first ten people didn't get it.
Jeff Moss
"and the science gets done and we make a neat gun for the people who are still alive." Woot! Let there be cake.
... out of anti-matter even if you had a big supply of it. Some simulations have indicated that as the antimatter began to contact matter, the energy of the initial annihilation reactions would drive the antimatter away from the site where the reaction began. So... you have a bottle of anti-matter, you "open" the "bottle", annhilations begin... and the antimatter is driven back into the bottle. Alternatively, you make the bottle disappear all at once, and the annihilation "flame front" proceeds somewhat slowly (in relative terms) into the mass of anti-matter. In either case, you wind up with something more like a big "whoosh" than a bang. I used to have a link where this was discussed... unfortunately can't find it now.