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Antihelium Discovered By STAR
Medevilae writes with this excerpt from ScienceBlog:
"Eighteen examples of the heaviest antiparticle ever found, the nucleus of antihelium-4, have been made in the STAR experiment at RHIC, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory. ... Ordinary nuclei of helium atoms consist of two protons and two neutrons. Called alpha particles when emitted in radioactive decays, they were found in this form by Ernest Rutherford well over a century ago. The nucleus of antihelium-4 (the anti-alpha) contains two antiprotons bound with two antineutrons. ... 'It’s likely that antihelium will be the heaviest antiparticle seen in an accelerator for some time to come,' says STAR Collaboration member Xiangming Sun of Berkeley Lab’s NSD. 'After antihelium the next stable antimatter nucleus would be antilithium, and the production rate for antilithium in an accelerator is expected to be well over two million times less than for antihelium.'"
Without positrons (anti-electrons) orbiting the nucleus, these are just high energy anti-particles. Technically anti-matter, but not really available for interesting study. What would be much more interesting would be molecular anti-hydrogen, complete with positron bonding. Then you could test many properties of anti-matter. But cooling and storing is still a major problem. This is an interesting discovery, but we're no closer to really understanding anti-matter because of it (or, for that matter, having warp drive.)
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
No, we became GODS when we gained the ability to make the blind see, the lame walk, and raise the dead. We have been GODS for quite some time. We are just becoming more powerful GODS.