Scientists could be months away from discovering antigravity

Scientists at CERN have announced that they've been able to trap 309 atoms of antihydrogen for over 15 minutes. This is long enough that soon, they'll be able to figure out whether antimatter obeys the law of gravity, or whether it's repelled by normal matter and falls "up" instead. It would be antigravity, for real.

source

If this pans out, which even the CERN teams are not sure it will, then can you imagine how Star Trek/Wars our world would become in just a few short years? The practical applications of AG in every single field we have would be astounding. Military, medical, engineering, everything. Hovercars, Hovertanks, Hoverboots....WOW! What a great time we could be living in right now.

-Thanks for the link-

Very nice find sir.

While I don't believe that this research will yield the secret to anti-gravity(as the article mentioned such a thing would violate the law of conservation) I am interested in finding where all of the antimatter is in the universe. If I am wrong and it does "fall up"(:lol that would mean that somewhere in the universe there are enormous filaments of antimatter galaxies at the edge of our regular matter universe.

Star and flag OP.

Thanks.
That's some craziness.
If they can build a containment unit for the anti hydrogen then we can have some for real clean power.
Not just anti gravity

that would be so awesome however i have started to have doughts about weather anything on here will come true

reply to post by wheresthetruth

covered here also


www.abovetopsecret.com...

Dont forget weapons. Crazy-ass weapons.

If I were a betting man I'd wager we'll see a matter/antimatter reaction level a city before we see it power a hospital.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


Ass weapons? you mean like anal bombs?

Originally posted by earthdude
reply to post by thisguyrighthere

 

Ass weapons? you mean like anal bombs?

Then it would be crazy ass-weapons rather than crazy-ass weapons.

Massive anal bombs. Sounds like a drink I'd rather not have.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


You gun nuts will think of anything

What could be so difficult in determining if gravity affects anti-matter in the opposite manner it affects normal matter? Gather the particles and reduce the magnetic confinement until... oh wait, they also respond to traditional magnetic confinement techniques? And we don't even know what makes gravity work yet.

*sigh*

I suppose I could offer suggestions that "gravity" is apparently related to "mass", and anti-particles would similarly have mass, but is their mass negative or positive? If their mass is positive, they should react to gravity just as normal matter does, no? If their mass is negative... dark matter?
So is it possible that "dark matter" and "dark energy" are the products of anti-matter? That would imply symmetry in the Universe is broken and would actually favor anti-matter instead of normal matter, correct?

Originally posted by earthdude
reply to post by thisguyrighthere

 

Ass weapons? you mean like anal bombs?

Every time someone I hear someone say or see someone write "[adjective]-ass [noun]", I move the hyphen over in my head.

"I have a sweet-ass car."

"I have a sweet ass-car."

The latter is definitely better.

reply to post by abecedarian


it's difficult because we can only get a small amount of anti-matter to observe. it's gonna be a miserably small blob not even visible with the naked eye. if you could determine whether or not gravity affects something you can barely see, let alone contain for longer than 15 minutes at a time, then you are in the wrong place... you should be at CERN helping these guys out.

reply to post by grey580

If they can build a containment unit for the anti hydrogen then we can have some for real clean power.
Not just anti gravity

Unfortunately, no, that's not the case.

The antimatter we "generate" from massive amounts of collisions has to come from energy put into the particle accelerator that creates it... which has to come from a more conventional source.

Regardless - even if we could find an ample supply of antimatter, it would still not be "clean" power. Matter-antimatter annihilations result in gamma radiation bursts that are capable of transmuting elements - often into unstable elements and isotopes - which ultimately leads to radioactive waste.

As for antigravity... not really, either.

Let's say we have found a particle that repels normal matter. The 308 anti-hydrogen atoms used in this experiment show just how difficult antimatter is to come by. To practically create "antigravity" - you would need a mass of antimatter roughly equal to the mass of whatever it is you are looking to give null gravity. You would need substantially more if you actually wanted it to make you go somewhere.

Further - in order to harness that repulsive force and transfer it to a "normal" matter object - you would need to use large electromagnetic containment fields - that would require a constant supply of power to keep a continuously accelerating antimatter mass from slamming into your 'normal' matter ship.

Which turns us back around to square one, for the most part.

Originally posted by thegiftbearer
reply to post by abecedarian

 

it's difficult because we can only get a small amount of anti-matter to observe. it's gonna be a miserably small blob not even visible with the naked eye. if you could determine whether or not gravity affects something you can barely see, let alone contain for longer than 15 minutes at a time, then you are in the wrong place... you should be at CERN helping these guys out.

Arguably, though, some of those anti-hydrogen nuclei will escape the confinement and collide with "normal" matter? Naked eye or not, decay particles will be visible on their apparatus, no?

reply to post by abecedarian


their reaction to matter will be easily observed. depending on how they can use that data to determine whether or not it is affected by gravity... dunno. trying to say it is easy is wrong. trying to say it isn't possible is wrong. im not a particle physicist by any stretch of the imagination. they can see it interact with matter on their instruments, but im not sure if they even have any ideas yet on how to try and observe its possible reaction to gravity or worse yet... its LACK of an interaction with gravity. i just didn't like someone saying it isn't as hard as it sounds.

Originally posted by thegiftbearer
reply to post by abecedarian

 

their reaction to matter will be easily observed. depending on how they can use that data to determine whether or not it is affected by gravity... dunno. trying to say it is easy is wrong. trying to say it isn't possible is wrong. im not a particle physicist by any stretch of the imagination. they can see it interact with matter on their instruments, but im not sure if they even have any ideas yet on how to try and observe its possible reaction to gravity or worse yet... its LACK of an interaction with gravity. i just didn't like someone saying it isn't as hard as it sounds.

They are learning how to gather the particles, which is via magnetic confinement. If the particles are constrained within such a magnetic field, arguably it is stronger than the gravitational field the particles are existing within, then presumably they can weaken the magnetic field in any particular direction and see the the particles migrate towards or away from that mag weakness, no?
That's what I mean by an "easy" test.

Originally posted by thegiftbearer....
if you could determine whether or not gravity affects something you can barely see, let alone contain for longer than 15 minutes at a time, then you are in the wrong place... you should be at CERN helping these guys out.

How often do you hear something like "I was staring at my cup of coffee...", or "two cars collided head-on".?
Sometimes it takes someone removed from the methodology to gleen insight.

Originally posted by wheresthetruth

Scientists at CERN have announced that they've been able to trap 309 atoms of antihydrogen for over 15 minutes. This is long enough that soon, they'll be able to figure out whether antimatter obeys the law of gravity, or whether it's repelled by normal matter and falls "up" instead. It would be antigravity, for real.

source

If this pans out, which even the CERN teams are not sure it will, then can you imagine how Star Trek/Wars our world would become in just a few short years? The practical applications of AG in every single field we have would be astounding. Military, medical, engineering, everything. Hovercars, Hovertanks, Hoverboots....WOW! What a great time we could be living in right now.

edit on 5-5-2011 by wheresthetruth because: add source

Even if it did show anti-gravity properties, it won't be turning us Star-Trek anytime soon for 3 simple reasons!

1) Crazy, crazy, crazy expensive to produce.
2) Only miniscule amounts have been produced so far over the past few decades.
3) Containment issues being another major hurdle.

Whether you like it or not, this stuff even if it could be produced & stored cheaply will never be made available to joe public. You really think any government is going to allow it's citizens to be running around with this stuff powering their homes, cars, planes or whatever. It simply ain't gonna happen! Especially when half a gram of the stuff would give you another Hiroshima.

If anti-matter is ever to be used in future, then it will be either as a military weapon or to be used in space travel in & around the solar system.

reply to post by abecedarian


i see what you mean. the only problem is on the subatomic and atomic scale the gravitational force is considered incredibly weak. that may or may not be sufficient to actually draw results from. it is a decent insight though. yes being detached from a certain doctrine is useful for outside the box thinking, but i still don't think it would be quite as easy as you suggest.

Perhaps I was a bit excitable in my initial thread and embelished the possibilities, but the fantasy of it all took over in mid-post. But, as stated, it does only take a spec of antimatter to cause a major reaction. The power potential for it in very small quantities is enormous.
I agree that the most likely use for it would be some sort of star-drive, but I would hope that a practical application in energy generation and distribution would come. I suppose none of that will happen though unless someone finds a way to harness the financial gain of it all though.

But still, the fantasy is to one day float by in an antigravity hovercar.

(Note: i dont know how I overlooked the link above to the existing thread; I did a search on CERN and Antigravity and all of the poste were 2010 or before).