CERN Scientists Capture Antimatter For Record 16 Minutes

[Lacsapix]

I have a Science-boner.

 

[rutger5000]

I don't see what is so scarry about anti-matter bombs. My understanding from particle physics isn't good enough to say this for sure, but it an anti-matter bomb wouldn't leave any radiactive waste or do any other damage after detonation. Yes the explosion can be made incredible strong, but doesn't need to be. An anti-matter bomb with a charge of less then 0.5 gram wouldn't destroy a city (I think I didn't do the math).

 

[rutger5000]

{1} I sincerely doubt that we are all doomed because of this.

{2} This is actually very cool.

That established, let us now commence with the concern of whether or not we are making Star Trek...or Schlock Mercenary.

No but it is a start. One day my friend, one day.

 

[MacManus99]

anti-matter reminds me of anti-mass. Anti-mass spectrometer. Black Mesa incident. lol random thoughts

 

[Solo-Wing]

"A great force. The power it holds can bring salvation or destruction at the whim of the user"
[sub][sub]cookie for reference[/sub][/sub]

If harnessed properly we could use it as a great power source. Lets just make sure no asshole gets hold of this and uses it as a weapon. Or god help us all.

 

[E-Penguin]

Anti-matter annihilation weaponry, wonderful.

There was a show I saw... Through The Wormhole With Morgan Freeman on Discovery Channel.

Apparently anti-matter the size of a grain of rice combined with matter would release an explosion the size of the Hiroshima bomb, or something of the like.

Scary shit.

Hey, I saw that yesterday!

They also said that the amount of antimatter needed for that would take CERN 10 Millenia to make. Apparently this wasn't due to effectiveness, but physics.

Lets just say that an antimatter bomb would take a stupid amount of time to make.

 

[DustStorm]

what is Anti-Matter

Anti-Particles are defined as being exactly like their normal particle counter parts but having the oppisite properties. For example, the anti-particle of an electron(known as a positron) has a positive charge but is otherwise exactly like an electron in terms of size and mass. When a particle meets its anti-particle, example: electron and positron colide, the two annihilate. This means that all of the matter is converted to Gamma Rays which are sent out in 2 oppisite directions.

 

[CommanderKirov]

Well that is certainly something I had not expected to see in my lifetime.

Amazing what the human mind can do.

 

[TimeLord]

I want to captain Earth's first warp ship!

 

[Jezzascmezza]

I wish I was science-aware, and understood what all this meant, because it at least sounds pretty cool.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Can someone please explain to me what an "anti-matter bomb" is, and whether it has any chance of coming to exist in reality or whether its just some joke made by the OP?

Very unlikely as you would have to be able to store anti matter which is not possible at the moment. Basically when matter and anti matter combine they release lots of energy to make your own equation to find out how and do this.

1 gram of matter and 1 gram of anti matter would result in a bomb of a yield 86 tonnes of TNT. For playing around to see how powerful you can get just take the value of Matter so say 1kg and the speed of light squared 9*10^16 and multiply by 2. That is the energy. For tonne TNT yield then divide than by 4.184*10^9.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hWZM8UicVI

=p

Also, this is pretty brilliant news. We're truly living in the age of discovery!

Yeah next we need to find what gives things mass if we can.

Can someone please explain to me what an "anti-matter bomb" is, and whether it has any chance of coming to exist in reality or whether its just some joke made by the OP?

Very unlikely as you would have to be able to store anti matter which is not possible at the moment. Basically when matter and anti matter combine they release lots of energy to make your own equation to find out how and do this.

1 gram of matter and 1 gram of anti matter would result in a bomb of a yield 86 tonnes of TNT. For playing around to see how powerful you can get just take the value of Matter so say 1kg and the speed of light squared 9*10^16 and multiply by 2. That is the energy. For tonne TNT yield then divide than by 4.184*10^9.

Could you provide a citation for what you've said about anti-matter? Or failing that, be willing to tell me what your profession is?

I'm doing Higher Level Physics and plan to engineering. For the "formula" it comes from E=mc[sup]2[/sup] E is the energy in Joules M is the mass in Kg and C is the speed of light which is around 3*10^8 in a vacuum. For the tonne TNT energy equivalent I Googled it so that might be off but rest is fine. Oh and you multiply by 2 because there are 2 particles and I am only adding the matter of one. So if you took a kg of each you could also just say 2kg in the formula instead of multiplying everything by 2. Here is the wiki for mass-energy there are plenty of citations there. Here is one for tonne TNT. [http://www.convert-me.com/en/convert/units/energy/energy.tntton.en.html]

what is Anti-Matter

It's sort of negative matter; if you combine a particle and it's anti-matter equivalent (electron and anti-electron, proton and anti-proton) the net result is 0 matter. A nuclear bomb sends out high energy particles and waves and this disrupts matter, anti-matter annihilates it.

The process of annihilation releases a lot of energy so theoretically matter/anti-matter reactions could be used as an incredible power source, but for now the process of creating an containing anti-matter is prohibitive.

Protons are anti-electrons.

No they are not. An anti matter particle has the same mass and charge. A proton is made up of uud quarks and is a hadron(feels strong force) and a baryon(has 3 quarks). An electron is a lepton(is to current an elementary particle).

..Correct. I fail physics forever! Was thinking of positron.

Ok that's fair enough I can see why you could make that mistake.

 

[Mr Dizazta]

Can we just get our Mass Effect Fields already. I am getting sick and tired of Earth already.

 

[Frotality]

so is anti-matter going to be the new magical sciency thing that gives people superpowers and kickstarts movie plots? cause ever since radiation faded form popularity, weve been cautiously drifting between dark matter and nanotech, mostly making up some unexplained space crystals or something... we really need science to popularize a new phlebotinum, sci-fi has gone too long without a solid excuse for magical science damnit!

 

[sosolidshoe]

On second thought, maybe it's best that you just don't report on science stories at all. You fail physics forever.

I was wondering how long it'd take to elicit this reaction.

Technically, you're correct (the best kind of correct), but you seem to be missing the point that the key aspect of reporting on scientific results is not to explicitly illustrate every detail, but is instead to break the concept down into terms which are more easily understood by the general public.

I could have penned a report that explained exactly how an antimatter weapon might work, but it would take days and clock in at tens of thousands of words. Who is going to read that?

As for your rebuttal to my succinct description, again, you're technically correct, but at the same time you're letting your semantics get in the way of the realization that without anything left to observe (and no one to even conceive of any observable elements), an antimatter weapon would, effectively, destroy reality.

(If you'd like, I can also convincingly argue my point philosophically via incredibly pretentious allusions to Soren Kierkegaard, but again, who wants to read ten thousand words that really only function as evidence that I'm very, very bright?)

Oh, and the same goes for your thing about "theories," though let's substitute "importance of using layman's terms" with "importance of using the common, if technically incorrect vernacular that the English language has naturally evolved toward."

Happy?

I'm not

Using "layman's terms" and dumbing down the public dialogue to a fifth-grade reading level is what got us into the situation the poster you quoted is on about in the first place. I'd invite you to go and read a peice of science journalism from the thirties, fourties, or even fifties and sixties. They use terms from the vernacular, they present their points as succinctly as possible, but when the need arises to explain something, they explain it properly and expect the audience to either grasp the explanation, or suppliment the article with further reading.

I hate the fact that it's now considered "elitist" to suggest that if someone wishes to understand a subject, they should put in some effort and investigate it in their spare time, rather than having everything pre-chewed into a flavourless, factless paste by the news media.

This isn't an attack on you in particular, by the way, I'm just in a bitter mood about the subject right now.

 

[Mordwyl]

As a king once said, "This is where we'll hold them! This is where THEY DIE!"

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Yeah next we need to find what gives things mass if we can.

That, and to truly define gravity... You're far more versed on the subject then I am, so this is a genuine question, but don't we still need to truly fit gravity into the maths of Quantum chromodynamics? We've got the theoretical evidence of the Higgs(now just to find the fucker!) and the gluons were theorised and then promptly discovered, but gravity is missing right?

If that is completely wrong please set me straight =]

No that is kinda of it. We need to find the Higgs or find it is not there or something to that effect and Gravity does not work with 100% Quantum mechanics as there are some issues. So it is not that it is missing exactly it is just that it behaves not like we would expect which has caused people to use String Theory and M-Theory. So far some think that might be the complete theory on gravity. Although I don'#t really know and can't say for sure.

 

[Saltyk]

"This would provide the first ever look inside the structure of antihydrogen -- element number 1 on the anti-periodic table."

Anti-periodic table? We need to stop recruiting science fiction writers for scientists.

OT: This is cool. We had and observed anti-matter for 16 minutes. I remember when things like antimatter and black holes were merely hypothesis and theory. What a world we live in.

Totally off Topic: What ever happened to the theory of White Holes?

 

[aashell13]

Antimatter bombs? Star trek photon torpedoes here we come...for better or worse...