Antimatter hangs around at CERN Scientists at CERN have published the results of experiments in which they captured anti-hydrogen particles for 1,000 seconds before annihilation. Their work, published in Nature Physics, should yield a better basis for comparing the behaviour of ordinary matter with antimatter. The scientists say the lifetime of the particles …
One theory is that an anti-proton is actually a proton travelling backwards through time. When the two collide, it is actually the proton being "reflected" in the time dimension by collision with a photon, so it looks like the 2 are converted to photons.
I didn't read too much about it, so the details are fuzzy... and this was only one theory about them.
Only if the containment was too large.
Nukes convert a miserly fraction of a percent of their mass into energy - an antimatter bomb would release it ALL. Of course it would release it mostly as Gamma, whereas a nuke releases large quantities of heat as well (due to the reaction of the remaining mass.
An antimatter bomb releases twice its mass as energy - it takes the same mass of normal matter with it.
The electrons and positrons (usually) convert to pairs of gamma rays. The protons and anti-protons (which are each made up of three quarks and a mess of virtual gluons) tend to be a lot messier and convert to various lighter particles plus energy, and those particles will then interact and/or annihilate with surrounding stuff until it eventually all ends up as energy in some form.
But the end result will be a Very Large Bang. Detailed observations are left as an exercise for the reader.
Could be useful if they (a) can be made more compact than the equivalent yield nuke (questionable in the case of AM) and (b) if they can explode without showering the surroundings with bits of U tamper and various unpleasant fission products (which an AM bomb should be able to do)...
CH3-OH is methanol. It's excellent for racing cars but terrible for the eyes etc., blindness ensues upon imbibing.
Anti-C2H5-OH [CH3-CH2-OH], ethanol, would be a safer option but the gamma rays pose a shielding problem; hence, I'd strongly recommend it only be consumed on extra special occasions.
Shuffling off this mortal coil being perhaps the very best example.
>:-)
The best part of the article if it gets proven to be true is this...
"Even more excitingly, the lab's particle physicists have plans for upcoming tests that will determine whether antimatter plays by gravity's rules, or whether they're truly "anti" in every definition. The ALPHA team plans to freeze a small lump of antihydrogen, and watch what happens.
If it falls up, we might be seeing the first step towards turning anti-gravity sci-fi into a reality. CERN is determined to test this within the next couple of months."
*Even* if antimatter was repelled by gravity how are you going to contain it so that it doesn't interact with the matter you want to fly through. The containment is going to be extremely sophisticated matter weighing a considerable amount more than the anti-matter.
The idea doesn't get off he ground
What has the Vatican ever done to deserve being demolecularised?
Apart from the Crusades, the dissolution of the monasteries (due in part to Henry VIII but could have been avoided if they had come to an agreement), the Inquisition, the infamous pedo priest scandal and subsequent coverup, etc.
To be fair they have improved a lot since then but even now some records remain sealed under the 1000 year rule (as in they will never be released but still exist in some vault somewhere)
We are talking about human beings here don't forget, albeit somewhat deluded ones.
AC, but run algorithm pattern-recognition-8472
Whats impressive is that Star Trek 'imagineered' a magnetic bottle for anti matter storage back in the 1960's. Along with how to actually use the stuff.
Science ...yaayyy but did the Scientists think up this independently or is a closet trekkie amongst the Cern team? What came first Chicken or the egg.
Still well done...now build a bliddy starship with it.
The book "Physics of Star Trek" mentions the physics professors and students they had as consults on the show, the writers would work with them to make stuff that was scientifically feasible. Or at least, didn't require putting frontal lobes on standby.
In the words of George Takai: "Oh Myyyyy"
Since all chemistry is essentially about moving electrons about , trying to react an anti-element with a normal element would result in the electrons and positrons (anit-electrons) annihilating each other, producing a gamma photon for each annihilation. Once all of the positrons (or electrons) had been disposed of, the nuclear particles (anti-protons and anti-neutrons) would react with their normal matter counterparts, relasing a shower of quarks, neutrinos, etc. as noted above. Since the anti-protns have a charge and the anti-neutrons do not, you might find the anti-neutrons would hang around for a lot longer. AFAIK, this also makes them harder to capture when they are produced in particle accelerators, which is why it is a lot easier to produce anti-hydrogen than any other anti-atoms, since all other elements only have stable isotopes containing neutrons.
On another note; to those talking about making bombs, etc. from antimatter, please bear in mind that 11 atoms of antihydrogen annihilating with normal matter would produce at most a few hundred photons in the annihilation. It is unlikely that this would even be detectable by the human eye even in a compeltely dark room (and if the photons were of a visible wavelength).
There are 6e23 (i.e 6 followed by 23 zeroes) atoms in 1g of hydrogen, we have a while to go yet before we can produce this much. Also, bear in mind, that to produce antimatter, we have to put that energy into producing the anti-particles in the first place, and the efficiency of this process is very very low, so to produce an anti-matter bomb, you'd have to use several times the amount of energy you want it to yield in its production, and you'd have to invent an efficient way of making that antimatter in the first place.
I calculate that one kilogram of antimatter would react with one kilogram of ordinary matter and release about 1.8e17 J of energy, which corresponds to about 43 megatons of TNT, which is slightly less than the largest man-made nuclear explosion so far, the Tsar Bomba test in 1961. The energy might initially be released as high-frequency gamma radiation, but I would hazard a wild guess that the surrounding air would be ionised and then no longer be transparent to the radiation, so a lot of the energy would be converted to heat within a fireball with a diameter of about 10 km, like with the Tsar Bomba.
For various reasons, some already mentioned, it's very unlikely that anyone would be able to or want to make such a bomb in the foreseeable future.
But all the nice scientists have said that a contra-terrene bomb isn't feasible, or would be of such puny destructive power as to be worthless.
Are you saying the nice scientists are WRONG and the EVIL MILITARY SCIENCE is correct, and you could build proper, planet anilhilating bomb as I assume the GRB from such a device would denude most of the living things on, at the very least, the surface of the planet...
So things are 2 orders of magnitude better already.
But WTF is this about anti particles responding to gravity "inversely"?
Would this not be obvious by now? A few radioisotopes are positron (anti-electron) emitters and have been know since the 1940's (at least). I'd have thought a particle which *rose* in a gravitational field would be *huge* news by know.
I may have erroniously caught the wrong end of the stick, but I was under the impression that all but a nanognat's fart of antimatter was already gone by t = 1 second. The traditional method of "banging the rocks (or particles at least) together, guys" is usually the easiest way of attempting to recreate this critical epoch, where there was clearly enough disparity for just matter to prevail thereafter.
Getting your antimatter cool enough to form atoms is a nice party trick, but it's not really relevant to the real problem. What this team hope to achieve by allowing them now for a few mere minutes at a time is quite frankly a mystery to me.
Good work on getting funding for such impressive toys, though.
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