Bretski wrote:So is anti matter "something". I really dont know how else to phrase that question.

Yes it is real stuff - just as substantial as ordinary matter.

If you don't have access to the paper in Nature, you can find it here.

You can also see many of the ALPHA publications here.

Enjoy!


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoSaHiCduDc[/youtube]

Material World: BBC iPlayer (audio). Available for 10 days.
c.11 mins: Interview with CERN researcher Dr. Niels Madsen outlines the nature of the anti-hydrogen research and findings.

It's not free energy, it takes a SHIT LOAD of energy to make these things. Where do you think they come from just pop into existence and scientist just happen to have been sitting there ready to capture them. Thats on the side of the amount of energy lost in the reaction (neutrinos for instance).

The process to create anti-matter is pretty damn inefficient. If you took all the anti-matter ever produced by science on this world from the beginning of when anti-matter was first created you wouldn't even be able to power your computer.

Other things to note is that they've been creating anti-matter atoms for awhile now. At first they would be destroyed immediately after being created, then they were able to trap them for 1/10th of a second. Now however they are able to trap them and keep them around much longer, not sure how much longer because the results have yet to be published.

zomgwtf wrote:It's not free energy, it takes a SHIT LOAD of energy to make these things. Where do you think they come from just pop into existence and scientist just happen to have been sitting there ready to capture them. Thats on the side of the amount of energy lost in the reaction (neutrinos for instance).

Other things to note is that they've been creating anti-matter atoms for awhile now. At first they would be destroyed immediately after being created, then they were able to trap them for 1/10th of a second. Now however they are able to trap them and keep them around much longer, not sure how much longer because the results have yet to be published.

But if they can use a narrow confinement field and boost the energies with tachyons routed through the deflector array, then maybe, just maybe, the anti-matter stream can be successfully introduced into the plasma stream of the warp-core, boosting the output of the dilithium reaction by at least factor of eight, and that just might give us what we need to escape the pull of the black hole.

Just a thought.

THWOTH wrote:

zomgwtf wrote:It's not free energy, it takes a SHIT LOAD of energy to make these things. Where do you think they come from just pop into existence and scientist just happen to have been sitting there ready to capture them. Thats on the side of the amount of energy lost in the reaction (neutrinos for instance).

Other things to note is that they've been creating anti-matter atoms for awhile now. At first they would be destroyed immediately after being created, then they were able to trap them for 1/10th of a second. Now however they are able to trap them and keep them around much longer, not sure how much longer because the results have yet to be published.

But if they can use a narrow confinement field and boost the energies with tachyons routed through the deflector array, then maybe, just maybe, the anti-matter stream can be successfully introduced into the plasma stream of the warp-core, boosting the output of the dilithium reaction by at least factor of eight, and that just might give us what we need to escape the pull of the black hole.

Just a thought.

Word. If you catch some tachyons to re-route call me up I'm down.

Bretski wrote:So is anti matter "something". I really dont know how else to phrase that question.

Both antimatter and matter have positive mass so yes.

Antimatter is the charge opposite of ordinary matter. An electron has negative charge, whereas a positron (antimatter electron) has an equal but opposite positive charge. When the two come in contact their charges cancel out and their mass is converted into pure energy.

An anti matter hydrogen atom would have a positron shell around an antiproton and in a world of antimatter would interact with other elements just as hydrogen does in our world. So a world of antimatter would look and feel exactly the same as the matter world.

Negative mass however is theoretical, and is very strange stuff. Gravity repels it, inertia would work in the opposite direction, and opposite magnetic charges repel rather than attract, and vise versa. Matter and negative matter I believe leaves nothing behind when they combine. Like filling a hole with dirt.

The Borgs are not pleased. Not that they ever are.

CdesignProponentsist wrote:

Bretski wrote:So is anti matter "something". I really dont know how else to phrase that question.

Both antimatter and matter have positive mass so yes.

Antimatter is the charge opposite of ordinary matter. An electron has negative charge, whereas a positron (antimatter electron) has an equal but opposite positive charge. When the two come in contact their charges cancel out and their mass is converted into pure energy.

An anti matter hydrogen atom would have a positron shell around an antiproton and in a world of antimatter would interact with other elements just as hydrogen does in our world. So a world of antimatter would look and feel exactly the same as the matter world.

Negative mass however is theoretical, and is very strange stuff. Gravity repels it, inertia would work in the opposite direction, and opposite magnetic charges repel rather than attract, and vise versa. Matter and negative matter I believe leaves nothing behind when they combine. Like filling a hole with dirt.

This is true I just would like to point out that protons and it's antiproton counter aren't fundamental particles like the electron, so what changes in charge in a proton is the quarks. The overall charge of the antiproton however will equal -1((-2/3)+(-2/3)+(+1/3)=(-1)) Same goes for neutrons.

Also I'm not entirely sure but I believe that in order for antimatter to behave like regular matter a parity switch also has to occur, not just a charge switch.

zomgwtf wrote:Also I'm not entirely sure but I believe that in order for antimatter to behave like regular matter a parity switch also has to occur, not just a charge switch.

Explain parity switch

CdesignProponentsist wrote:

zomgwtf wrote:Also I'm not entirely sure but I believe that in order for antimatter to behave like regular matter a parity switch also has to occur, not just a charge switch.

Explain parity switch

Uhmm switch in orientation in one spatial co-ordinate. So in this case I'm pretty sure it would be left-right. So the antimatter would be a mirror image of real matter.

Not content with antimatter, some of the CERN folks look like they are about to capture anti-profit

http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of- ... pot-908940

Good luck to them anyway

zomgwtf wrote:

CdesignProponentsist wrote:

zomgwtf wrote:Also I'm not entirely sure but I believe that in order for antimatter to behave like regular matter a parity switch also has to occur, not just a charge switch.

Explain parity switch

Uhmm switch in orientation in one spatial co-ordinate. So in this case I'm pretty sure it would be left-right. So the antimatter would be a mirror image of real matter.

As far as I can remember:

Pure electromagnetic interactions are symmetric under swaps of particles for antiparticles
Pure electromagetic interactions are also symmetric under parity flips

Weak interactions are not symmetric under either of these transformations. It's nearly symmetric under the combination of the two, but not quite.

Google will reveal more details....

Now one thing only remains .....

How to get from the anti-matter atom to "Therefore Jesus".

Anyone?

zomgwtf wrote:At first they would be destroyed immediately after being created, then they were able to trap them for 1/10th of a second. Now however they are able to trap them and keep them around much longer, not sure how much longer because the results have yet to be published.

Apparently it's now 2/10ths of a second, which I suppose is an age if you are an anti-matter scientist (or Usain Bolt).

Arcanyn wrote:To be left with nothing, you'd need negative mass, which is a whole other thing entirely - and way cooler, if it turns out to exist.

How do you define "cooler" (or "cool") for the above sentence?

thats all fine that they can keep some antimatter alive longer, but what does that mean to the layman?
i.e thick me

i assume it leads to a better understanding of the universe, but is it more specific than that?

if the vids explain all this sorry but im at work and cant view them

Antimatter is essentially a mirror image of ordinary matter -- it's macroscopic properties are just like the corresponding matter.

As to producing it, I tracked down some stuff on how particle-accelerator labs make positrons and antiprotons for use in their experiments.

For positrons, shoot an electron beam with an energy of about 250 MeV at a metal target. It will produce about 5*10-3 positrons per electron, or a relative efficiency of 5*10-5.

For antiprotons, shoot a proton beam with an energy of about 120 GeV at a metal target. it will produce about 2.5*10-5 antiprotons per proton, or a relative efficiency of 4*10-7.

This is relative to all the energy going into pair production, which means that only half the energy goes into positrons or antiprotons.

Sources:
SpringerLink - Hyperfine Interactions, Volume 44, Numbers 1-4 -- Positron production for particle accelerators - positrons
Build a (Virtual) Particle Accelerator - antiprotons


Accelerator operation is an additional source of inefficiency, and I haven't been able to find good numbers for that.

My understanding of quantum electrodynamics (an oxymoron, I know), is that a vacuum has nothing in it on average. Just like a bank account that may sometimes have 100 dollars in it and sometimes have 100 dollars overdrawn in it, but on average has 0 dollars in it. If that's the case, how does the antimatter avoid comming into contact with the matter momentarily present in the vacuum? Have I misrepresented quantum electrodynamics?

ughaibu wrote:

Arcanyn wrote:To be left with nothing, you'd need negative mass, which is a whole other thing entirely - and way cooler, if it turns out to exist.

How do you define "cooler" (or "cool") for the above sentence?

As in 'niftier'. If it exists, you could use it to do a lot of really useful things, like create wormholes and generate unlimited quantities of energy without violating the first law of thermodynamics.