• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Physicists Capture Antimatter

Jucon

DP Veteran
Joined
Mar 9, 2010
Messages
787
Reaction score
222
Location
USA
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Moderate
Physicists capture antimatter - Europe - Al Jazeera English

Physicists have created, and for the first time trapped, antimatter atoms, one of the biggest mysteries of modern science, the European Centre for Nuclear Research says.

The Switzerland-based research institute, also known as CERN, said on Wednesday it had produced antihydrogen atoms - the opposite of a hydrogen atom - in a magnetic trap and kept them viable for more than 170 milliseconds.

Holding the antimatter in a vacuum for this fraction of a second allowed the physicists to study the atoms, CERN said in an article in the British journal Nature.

"We're ecstatic. This is five years of hard work," Jeffrey Hangst, a spokesman at CERN, told the journal.

An antihydrogen atom is made from a negatively charged antiproton and a positively charged positron, the antimatter counterpart of the electron.

Experiments have produced antimatter atoms before but only in a free state. That means they instantly collide with ordinary matter and get annihilated, making it impossible to measure them or study their structure.

I didn't realize they had created antimatter before. I thought it's existence was still just a theory!

I can't wait to find out what they can do with it.
 
Antimatter is very real but it's a burden to produce given our world's current energy economy. I don't remember where I heard this figure from so if there are physicists on the board who want to correct me I invite them to do so, but I heard it would take billions of dollars to produce a single theoretical gram of antimatter; however, a few grams could power a return trip to mars while making the fuel cargo way less cumbersome.

I think as a research avenue it's very interesting, but for our practical existence it would make much more sense to try and conquer fusion as a concept. (If it's possible, that is.)
 
Antimatter is very real but it's a burden to produce given our world's current energy economy. I don't remember where I heard this figure from so if there are physicists on the board who want to correct me I invite them to do so, but I heard it would take billions of dollars to produce a single theoretical gram of antimatter; however, a few grams could power a return trip to mars while making the fuel cargo way less cumbersome.

I think as a research avenue it's very interesting, but for our practical existence it would make much more sense to try and conquer fusion as a concept. (If it's possible, that is.)

At our current rate of capturing, getting a few grams of antimatter would take millions of years.
 
Last edited:
Wooo Hoo my evil plan is working.....Just a few steps left till my bomb is ready
 
Wooo Hoo my evil plan is working.....Just a few steps left till my bomb is ready

If you took all of the antimatter produced to date, you couldn't even heat up a pot of coffee.
 
If you took all of the antimatter produced to date, you couldn't even heat up a pot of coffee.


Hey don't rain on my parade man:2razz:
 
Antimatter is very real but it's a burden to produce given our world's current energy economy. I don't remember where I heard this figure from so if there are physicists on the board who want to correct me I invite them to do so, but I heard it would take billions of dollars to produce a single theoretical gram of antimatter; however, a few grams could power a return trip to mars while making the fuel cargo way less cumbersome.
Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois is the largest producer of antimatter in the world. In the Tevatron accelerator located there, protons and anti-protons collide at close to the speed of light (c). It is estimated that the cost required to create one pound of antimatter is greater than the financial assets of every nation on earth combined.
 
Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois is the largest producer of antimatter in the world. In the Tevatron accelerator located there, protons and anti-protons collide at close to the speed of light (c). It is estimated that the cost required to create one pound of antimatter is greater than the financial assets of every nation on earth combined.

Time to break out the global credit card.
 
Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois is the largest producer of antimatter in the world. In the Tevatron accelerator located there, protons and anti-protons collide at close to the speed of light (c). It is estimated that the cost required to create one pound of antimatter is greater than the financial assets of every nation on earth combined.
It is to expensive to produce commercially, now.

It is also impossible for us to store anti-matter safely or control the pair annihilation reaction, yet.

This breakthrough is just a small step on a long trip. But it is a very important one.
Before the problems of commercial scale production, storage & use can be overcome we have to be able to study & understand just what the properties of what we are producing really are.

I for one salute the guys & gals at CERN.
Originally Posted by Orion
(snip)
I think as a research avenue it's very interesting, but for our practical existence it would make much more sense to try and conquer fusion as a concept. (If it's possible, that is.

As to which is more practical, antimatter of fusion, why not work on both & see which works out best? That would be more practical than committing to a single path & determining 20 years down the road that we chose poorly.
 
It is also impossible for us to store anti-matter safely or control the pair annihilation reaction, yet.
It requires approximately 1E6 protons to make 1 anti-proton (pbar). Fermilab produces and stacks around 250E10 pbars in 16 hours. Stacking means that the pbars are introduced into the storage/injector ring.

giPtw.jpg
 
It requires approximately 1E6 protons to make 1 anti-proton (pbar). Fermilab produces and stacks around 250E10 pbars in 16 hours. Stacking means that the pbars are introduced into the storage/injector ring.

giPtw.jpg



Looks like something very weird happened to Mickey's other ear there.

Must have been the antimatter.
 
It requires approximately 1E6 protons to make 1 anti-proton (pbar). Fermilab produces and stacks around 250E10 pbars in 16 hours. Stacking means that the pbars are introduced into the storage/injector ring.
(snip)
Perhaps I should have been more clear, by storage I meant safe long term (Hours, weeks, months, years) not milliseconds storage of commercially viable quantities. No we can't do that yet. I am confident that at some point that hurtle will be overcome, with the person/persons responsible earning the Nobel Prize in physics.
I meant to say the same for a method to produce commercially viable of anti-hydrogen. Maybe not in my lifetime, but I hope it is.
 
Wouldn't the cheaper way to capture antimatter be to just uncapture some regular matter?
 
  • Like
Reactions: 505
Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois is the largest producer of antimatter in the world. In the Tevatron accelerator located there, protons and anti-protons collide at close to the speed of light (c). It is estimated that the cost required to create one pound of antimatter is greater than the financial assets of every nation on earth combined.

Time to turn to communism for that pound of antimatter.....
 
Think of the explosive destruction that is possible if it fell into the wrong hands.
 
Think of the explosive destruction that is possible if it fell into the wrong hands.

My god... they might...

Wait. Nothing. Because the antimatter atoms were only captured for a few milliseconds. And even if they'd been stored permanently, 38 atoms (from running the experiment hundreds of times) would contain enough energy to.. well, nothing. The equivalent energy of way less than a nanogram of tnt.
 
:prof 1 kg of anti-matter+1kg of non-anti matter=180 pentajoules (43 megatons of TNT) or 180000000000000000 joules, so 100 grams, would produce 18000000000000000 joules, so 1 gram would produce 18000000000000 joules, and 10 nanograms (the largest amount ever produced) would produce 180000 joules-enough to heat a litre of water to about 43 degrees C. (if my math is correct(no this has nothing to do with the subject, I'm just bored))
 
Back
Top Bottom