Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ALPHA observes light spectrum of antimatter for first time

phys.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 86 posts

Re: ALPHA observes light spectrum of antimatter for first time

#21

Post by komali2 »

josho wrote: post #16

Simply amazing. I still thought antimatter was a theory. Can anyone recommend a book on this topic for the layman?

It is a theory, like everything else in physics, including the workings of gravity.

It's a bit of a shame that in elementary school and high school, people are taught about "facts" such as Newtonian physics without exploring also some of the weirdness of quantum physics that challenges classic physics. I.e. I had no idea about all the controversy around how gravity "actually" works until I read a book on string theory - I went 25 years just assuming "yup gravity is a thing and we understand 100% how it works."

Sorry, I don't have a book to recommend, just babbling away.

EDIT: Maybe the string theory book I read would be a good place, actually? I can't remember if it delves much into anti matter - The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory (Paperback) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8049273-the-elegant-univ...

Re: ALPHA observes light spectrum of antimatter for first time

#22

Post by HarryHirsch »

plandis wrote: post #17
PavleMiha wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we're running out of surprising things.

Lord Kelvin said something similar in 1900 about there being nothing left to discover. Within 30 years quantum mechanics would be discovered/created.

At that time everyone knew there was something up with blackbody radiation, classical physics gave no guide why the equipartition theorem should not apply any more at short wavelengths.

Re: ALPHA observes light spectrum of antimatter for first time

#23

Post by openasocket »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #22
plandis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lord Kelvin said something similar in 1900 about there being nothing left to discover. Within 30 years quantum mechanics would be discovered/created.

At that time everyone knew there was something up with blackbody radiation, classical physics gave no guide why the equipartition theorem should not apply any more at short wavelengths.

And now we know something's up with gravity, because we can't seem to reconcile it with quantum mechanics.

Re: ALPHA observes light spectrum of antimatter for first time

#25

Post by nonbel »

komali2 wrote: post #21
josho wrote: post #16

Simply amazing. I still thought antimatter was a theory. Can anyone recommend a book on this topic for the layman?

It is a theory, like everything else in physics, including the workings of gravity. It's a bit of a shame that in elementary school and high school, people are taught about "facts" such as Newtonian physics without exploring also some of the weirdness of quantum physics that challenges classic physics. I.e. I had no idea about all the controversy around how gravity "actually" works until I read a book on string theor…

>"I had no idea about all the controversy around how gravity "actually" works until I read a book on string theory"

FYI, there seems to be quite a bit of controversy regarding whether string theory is even science:

>'Many of today’s theorists — chief among them the proponents of string theory and the multiverse hypothesis — appear convinced of their ideas on the grounds that they are beautiful or logically compelling, despite the impossibility of testing them. Ellis and Silk accused these theorists of “moving the goalposts” of science and blurring the line between physics and pseudoscience. “The imprimatur of science should be awarded only to a theory that is testable,” Ellis and Silk wrote, thereby disqualifying most of the leading theories of the past 40 years. “Only then can we defend science from attack.”'

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151216-physicists-and-philo...

Re: ALPHA observes light spectrum of antimatter for first time

#26

Post by HarryHirsch »

openasocket wrote: post #23
HarryHirsch wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that time everyone knew there was something up with blackbody radiation, classical physics gave no guide why the equipartition theorem should not apply any more at short wavelengths.

And now we know something's up with gravity, because we can't seem to reconcile it with quantum mechanics.

I know, and the Lord Kelvin quote is too suspicious to be credible, a man like him would never have said such a thing.

If we can trust Wikipedia he never did: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Thomson#Misattributed

Re: ALPHA observes light spectrum of antimatter for first time

#27

Post by _rpd »

openasocket wrote: post #23
HarryHirsch wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that time everyone knew there was something up with blackbody radiation, classical physics gave no guide why the equipartition theorem should not apply any more at short wavelengths.

And now we know something's up with gravity, because we can't seem to reconcile it with quantum mechanics.

Our current theory of gravity doesn't even explain how galaxies form and rotate unless over a quarter of the universe is made of unspecified "dark matter." We are children playing on the shores of undiscovered oceans.

Re: ALPHA observes light spectrum of antimatter for first time

#29

Post by kkylin »

lutorm wrote: post #18
josho wrote: post #16

Simply amazing. I still thought antimatter was a theory. Can anyone recommend a book on this topic for the layman?

Not a theory at all. You get antimatter out of many common radioactive materials: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron_emission It's the building atoms out of it that's tricky, but antimatter is nothing new.

And with practical applications as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron_emission_tomography

Re: ALPHA observes light spectrum of antimatter for first time

#30

Post by nitrogen »

xj9 wrote: post #24
josho wrote: post #16

Simply amazing. I still thought antimatter was a theory. Can anyone recommend a book on this topic for the layman?

scientific theories are not hypotheses.

Right. Science uses the word "theory" in the same sense as music theory. A scientific theory is a collection of related ideas that form a robustly cohesive whole, with the power to explain some set of phenomena.
Post reply on HN