Antimatter found and captured by LHC! This is our precursor to warp speed space travel!

Get ready guys, the next few years should be really interesting. Could this be one of those developmental milestones that extraterrestrial civilizations search for when determining significant intelligent life?

Antimatter trapped and contained

Antimatter, an elusive type of matter that's rare in the universe, has now been trapped for more than 16 minutes — an eternity in particle physics. In fact, scientists who've been trapping antihydrogen atoms at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva say isolating the exotic particles has become so routine that they expect to soon begin experiments on this rare substance. Antimatter is like a mirror image of matter. For every matter particle (a hydrogen atom, for example), a matching antimatter particle is thought to exist (in this case, an antihydrogen atom) with the same mass, but the opposite charge. "We've trapped antihydrogen atoms for as long as 1,000 seconds, which is forever" in the world of high-energy particle physics, said Joel Fajans, a University of California, Berkeley professor of physics who is a faculty scientist at California's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a member of the ALPHA (Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus) experiment at CERN.

Posted already a few times......i assume you didnt use the search button??

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Not sure if this will lead to anything but science is certainly getting closer and closer to the next big break through. Society is about due for some new revelation and maybe this is it or will lead to something else.

Very interesting stuff that they are doing there.

reply to post by ScepticDebunker


I've had several goes at the search button recently and it hasn't worked - perhaps you were luckier than I.

reply to post by genma


Antimatter isnt what we think its going to be..
in terms of power needed to make it..
from my post on the other thread
as a wise man once said, we cant change the laws of physics...

Originally posted by sprocket2cog
reply to post by Novise

 

Anti matter wont ever be used for large scale energy or propolsion systems.
because anti matter dost exsist in nature we have to sink large amounts of energy into making it in the first place..
and the amount we can make for the energy put in negates any use outside the lab

There is no possibility to use antimatter as energy ‘source’. Unlike solar energy, coal or oil, antimatter does not occur in nature; we first have to make every single antiparticle, and we have to invest (much) more energy than we get back during annihilation.

You can imagine antimatter as a storage medium for energy, much like you store electricity in rechargeable batteries. The process of charging the battery is reversible with relatively small loss. Still, it takes more energy to charge the battery than you get back.

The inefficiency of antimatter production is enormous: you get only a tenth of a billion (10-10) of the invested energy back. If we could assemble all the antimatter we've ever made at CERN and annihilate it with matter, we would have enough energy to light a single electric light bulb for a few minutes.

public.web.cern.ch...

Oh Hogwash! Where there's a will, there's a way.

reply to post by sprocket2cog


But can it be used as a weapon? Probably.
2ndline.

So let me see if I got this correct. NASA will be using antimatter to power their proposed heavy-lift 'warp-drive' rocket, that will launch their new Orion (splash-down landing) crew capsule?

Just great. Now we have yet another way to blow our selfs off the map. If they build up any real amount and them loose the magnetic containment field then the LHC and everything for miles gets blown into orbit. I am glad I do not live near the thing.

Originally posted by David291
reply to post by sprocket2cog

 

But can it be used as a weapon? Probably.
2ndline.

Nope it wont matter if it can , already covered that as well

Originally posted by sprocket2cog
reply to post by manontrial

 

Weaponinzed antimatter isnt going to happen before we get off this rock and find some out in space
(unlikely by the way)

No. It would take billions of years to produce enough antimatter for a bomb having the same destructiveness as ‘typical’ hydrogen bombs, of which there exist more than ten thousand already.

Sociological note: scientists realized that the atom bomb was a real possibility many years before one was actually built and exploded, and then the public was totally surprised and amazed. On the other hand, the public somehow anticipates the antimatter bomb, but we have known for a long time that it cannot be realized in practice.

public.web.cern.ch...
by the time we made enough to use it in a bomb, there would be nothing worth fighting for..
we may as well just let the sun expand and destroy the earth, it would be quicker then making enough anti matter to make a bomb.

Originally posted by Lynda101
reply to post by ScepticDebunker

 

I've had several goes at the search button recently and it hasn't worked - perhaps you were luckier than I.

Its very easy.

You type a search term, such as your desired thread title....push the search button and bobs your uncle
Ive yet to have a problem with it

Originally posted by genma
Oh Hogwash! Where there's a will, there's a way.

Nope just cold hard science.. not hogwash...
you should read the links and do some more research greater minds then ours want it to work, but it wont..
its great stuff to play with but in our life time it aint going to power a spaceship period.

Originally posted by sprocket2cog
reply to post by genma

 

Antimatter isnt what we think its going to be..
in terms of power needed to make it..
from my post on the other thread
as a wise man once said, we cant change the laws of physics...

Too true however physics has not yet settled on how the universe is "constructed". Lots of arguments about superposition leading to multiverses and why atoms can be in superposition but real world "objects" cannot. The exact nature of the fabric of space-time has not yet been identified. It is on this that I pin my hopes. If we find we can indeed warp space or punch holes through it then the possibility of long distance space travel becomes a reality. Without that law of physics we will never get beyond our solar system no matter what the power source!

reply to post by malcr


Dont get me wrong, i think bending time space can happen, but antimatter wont be the power source.
more likely a black hole in my mind..
Physics is always changing in our understanding of it.
quantum physics is a bit of a pet hobby and it never ceases to amaze me
oh and as far as suerpostions go, you might want read some more...
the world is getting stranger..
not just atoms in superpostions anymore.
www.facepunch.com...
www.nature.com...

While this article is about capturing and holding "anti-atoms", antimatter in general has been "found" before, and even made made before -- and is used everyday in hospitals.

Doctors and hospitals have been using PET scans for years. PET stands for Positron Emission Tomography, and it uses positrons, which are the antimatter version of electrons (positrons are positively charge; electrons are negatively charged). The positrons come from the decay of the substance fluorine-18, which is created in particle accelerators (similar to CERN) mainly for the use in PET scans.

The fluorine-18 is ingested by the patient, and travels throughout the body. As the fluorine-18 decays, the antimatter positrons emitted by that decay are annihilated by regular matter -- i.e., negatively charged electrons. the PET scanner detects these tiny annihilation, and returns an image, similar to an MRI or CAT scan.

However, I can see how the containment of these anti-atoms in this article differ from the anti-electrons (positrons) used in a PET scanner, but I just wanted to point out that "antimatter" in general is not a brand new thing that we never created before.

reply to post by sprocket2cog


"Antimatter isnt what we think its going to be..
in terms of power needed to make it..
from my post on the other thread
as a wise man once said, we cant change the laws of physics.."

But there are certainly loop holes around the laws of physics. Once we master long distance space travel, then it becomes more believable that intelligent life has visited us. That being said, if human intelligence can exist here on earth, some other advanced intelligence can exist elsewhere in the universe. The universe is made of the same stuff and planets and stars form the same way across the universe. So its not out of the question that humanoid forms of life exist on other planets and we can't rule out that some of these intelligent beings are hundreds or thousands of years more advanced than us in technology. But will our human ego allow us to believe this?

Originally posted by ScepticDebunker
Posted already a few times......i assume you didnt use the search button??

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

edit on 7-6-2011 by ScepticDebunker because: (no reason given)

Please contribute to one of those threads....

Closed.