CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe • Hacker News Board

AsmodiusVI wrote: post #7

jcalx wrote: post #4

CERN preparing a portable antimatter container right around the election of a new Pope? Sounds familiar [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_%26_Demons_(film)

Dan Brown is definitely taking notes.

Or on contrary expecting some sort of royalties

Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe

#15

Post by Loughla » Thu, May 22, 2025, 12:49 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #5

> If the delivery can be made successfully—and it appears we are just a liquid helium supply away from getting it to work—the new facility in Germany should allow measurements with a precision of over 100 times better than anything that has been achieved at CERN. Hmm. It sounds good until you realize that's two decimal places. Two decimal places is a pretty marginal gain for a lot of work.

Two decimal places is a shit ton of precision though.

A one inch gap is immense compared to a .01 inch gap.

Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe

#16

Post by senectus1 » Thu, May 22, 2025, 1:07 AM UTC

jcalx wrote: post #4

CERN preparing a portable antimatter container right around the election of a new Pope? Sounds familiar [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_%26_Demons_(film)

oh man, the conspiracy nuts are going to have fun with this.

Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe

#17

Post by pezezin » Thu, May 22, 2025, 1:36 AM UTC

Last week I had the chance to visit CERN's Antimatter Factory, and let me tell you I was feeling like a child on Christmas Day.

The ridiculously advanced technology required to produce only a few picograms of antimatter is truly impressive. That they are considering sending it hundreds of km away is mind blowing.

Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe

#18

Post by queuebert » Thu, May 22, 2025, 1:45 AM UTC

If you can ship antimatter, you can drop it on people. Luckily, we are still orders of magnitude away from a bomb-sized amount.

Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe

#19

Post by sargun » Thu, May 22, 2025, 1:50 AM UTC

queuebert wrote: post #18

If you can ship antimatter, you can drop it on people. Luckily, we are still orders of magnitude away from a bomb-sized amount.

What's the biggest barrier to creating a lot of antimatter?

Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe

#20

Post by thrance » Thu, May 22, 2025, 1:52 AM UTC

jcalx wrote: post #4

CERN preparing a portable antimatter container right around the election of a new Pope? Sounds familiar [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_%26_Demons_(film)

If I recall correctly, pope Francis was actually afraid the LHC would "open a gate to hell".