

CERN Scientists Trap Antimatter for Almost 17 Minutes - nickolai
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2386429,00.asp

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zitterbewegung
Article in nature for the inclined
[http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphys...](http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphys2025.html)

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Groxx
I was just struck by the accuracy of this: <http://xkcd.com/906/>

Thanks for the link! I wish I could follow it more closely, but overall 'tis
interesting stuff.

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zbanks
Has anyone heard if they managed to observe the effect of gravity on the
particles? The Nature article was vague...

I remember hearing that this was one of the reasons why they needed to trap
antimatter for observable lengths of time. To my understanding, they aren't
completely sure yet which way antimatter "falls."

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foob
It will still be a while before this is directly observed.

We're fairly sure that it "falls" downwards for a wide range of theoretical
reasons and also due to the 1987 observation of gravitational lensing in
neutrinos and antineutrinos from a supernova. If we observe the opposite in a
lab then it will be incredible because we'll have to reevaluate a lot of what
we think we know about physics. If we observe it "falling down" then it will
be an important result but not at all revolutionary.

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superkarn
"falling down" - does that mean gravity is an attractive force between matter-
antimatter or antimatter-antimatter (or both)?

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sp332
Antimatter has opposite electrical charge (and magnetic moment) from normal
matter. It should have the exact same mass and interaction with gravity as
normal matter.

An anti-electron is called a positron because it has a positive charge instead
of negative. Antiproton (sometimes called negatron, but rarely) is just a
proton with opposite charge. You can even make a hydrogen atom out of an
antiproton and a positron, called antihydrogen.
<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Antihydrogen>

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MaxGabriel
Pretty impressive, but still not nearly long enough to survive a trip to the
Vatican

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dpcan
I believe you are thinking of strange matter / strangelets :)

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mason55
Or maybe just Anti-Popes

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pella
nearly 17 minutes = 1,000 seconds, or 16 minutes and 40 seconds.

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ryandvm
Thanks?

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pella
see the news headlines ...

-"Stick Up: Antimatter Atoms Trapped for More Than 15 Minutes" by Scientific American

\- "Antimatter Trapped for Amazingly Long 16 Minutes" by Foxnews

-"Scientists hold anti-matter for 17 minutes" by Radioaustralia

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maeon3
If only we could develop a small device (say the size of a briefcase) to
convert electricity to antimatter and then slow release antimatter reaction
back to electricity.

It would make electric vehicles much more economical than oil. We could
finally make a ship that could pack enough punch to make a trip to the
asteroid belt and back. To bring back the unobtainium.

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reemrevnivek
The ability to carry road-trip quantities of antimatter in a briefcase would
take the threat of terrorism to a whole new level. How much would you need to
take out a plane? A building? A city?

Nuclear cars would be cool, too, but I think we need to consider the
weaponizable nature (both for governmental military forces and for terrorists)
of these technologies.

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silvestrov
From Wikipedia: _The reaction of 1 kg of antimatter with 1 kg of matter would
produce [...] the rough equivalent of 43 megatons of TNT. For comparison, Tsar
Bomb, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, reacted an estimated yield of
50 megatons._

I dare say this would take a briefcase bomb to a whole new level.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter#Fuel>

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iwwr
There's no way to contain it without big, heavy equipment.

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jeangenie
any speculation on when the head crabs are coming?

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richbradshaw
You need a resonance cascade for that to happen, which so far seems unlikely.

