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CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe

arstechnica.com

161–170 of 188 posts

Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe

#161

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If you want to visit Atlas (control room) or CERN’s first accelerator (a synchrocyclotron) just show up in the morning when the visitor center opens. The tour guides are often passionate scientists. The museum is worth visiting, you’ll get to see the first www server (Tim-Berner Lee’s nextcube). The live shows are well put together. And everything is pretty much free of charge. The only thing I can think of that has…

Can you visit CMS? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Muon_Solenoid

The presentations/videos talk extensively about CMS' detector (if I remember right). I'm not sure about visiting the control center, you would need to inquire if/when they do that.

Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you visit CMS? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Muon_Solenoid

The presentations/videos talk extensively about CMS' detector (if I remember right). I'm not sure about visiting the control center, you would need to inquire if/when they do that.

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Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe

#163
post #84

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Antimater has positively charged electrons (positrons) and negatively charged protons (antiprotons). Its neutrons are antineutrons made of a positron and antiproton. So just the charges are swapped around. Charges interact with electric fields. Gravity is related to mass. It doesn't matter whether the bulk of the mass comes from negatively or positively charged particles. Of course, antimatter has opposite electrical…

So…wait , can anti-mass particles exist? Like an inverse Higgs boson?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_mass

Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe

#164

Fyi, the transport and storage of antimatter is very interesting to those developing nuclear weapons. An antimatter reaction could theoretically be used to pump a nuclear warhead, enabling perhaps smaller nukes than are currently feasible. That is IF one could store and transport usable amounts of antimatter for extended periods.

It's just too expensive. I think a quadrillion per gram. You can bribe the whole population with a million dollars or if you prefer a more classic method just give the enemy president a trillion dollars.

You wouldn't need anything near a gram. It isn't used for its explosive power but to create particles to increase the efficiency of the surrounding nuclear reaction, not actually contribute any explosive force on its own.

Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe

#165
post #24

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That's awesome. My wife and I have been thinking about visiting CERN too. Curious, what part of the visit stood out as especially impressive? Last I checked, there was a pretty long waiting list for tours.

If you want to visit Atlas (control room) or CERN’s first accelerator (a synchrocyclotron) just show up in the morning when the visitor center opens. The tour guides are often passionate scientists. The museum is worth visiting, you’ll get to see the first www server (Tim-Berner Lee’s nextcube). The live shows are well put together. And everything is pretty much free of charge. The only thing I can think of that has…

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Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe

#166
post #73

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I've seen this expressed before, but every picture I've seen of CERN just looks like a massive pile of wiring, magnets and generic electronics. So I'm not sure why people react like you do towards it. Is it different from seeing it in pictures? To me things like tokamak fusion reactors or rockets or even places like the massive piles of pipe work outside of SpaceX's launch site feel way cooler.

Man, I've been in their underground part, every 5 years they open for public and open the detectors themselves. It was by huge margin by far the best executed engineering of any type I ever saw, and I don't consider myself a nerd in this area. Every tiny detail was simply perfect, not a speck of dust, all cables aligned perfectly etc. Seeing inner parts of these massive detector tubes (maybe 10x20m ?) was the pinnacl…

"Man, I've been in their underground part, every 5 years they open for public and open the detectors themselves."

This isn't every 5 years, the detectors are available for the public to visit every winter, and often at other times of the year as well.

Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> picograms I needed to know how much antimatter weighed and this article seemed helpful (though I am poorly placed to know if it’s correct). https://gizmodo.com/how-much-does-antimatter-weigh-492195828

The same as matter basically. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10533407/ The interesting idea behind it is basically that for antimatter a potential wall, imagine a step function which is 0 for negative and 1 for positive and a wave that hits the wall from the negative to the positives, in theory it cannot propagate in the wall, turns out that one solution can propagate in that wall and that's antimatter: It…

>> "fallen up" instead of falling down.

Which may have been true in a world where gravity was a charge or like the other forces. But it isn't. Everything with mass has mass. There is no detection of any sort of anti-mass, no matter the exotic possibilities such a thing would enable.

Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe

#168
post #117

A Nobel prize is due to the first person that proves whether exporting antimatter results in negative import duties or not.

Clearly - but in physics or economics?

Well there is no nobel price in economics[1] so probably a nobel peace price for ending trade wars.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sveriges_riksbanks_pris_i_ekon...

Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to visit Atlas (control room) or CERN’s first accelerator (a synchrocyclotron) just show up in the morning when the visitor center opens. The tour guides are often passionate scientists. The museum is worth visiting, you’ll get to see the first www server (Tim-Berner Lee’s nextcube). The live shows are well put together. And everything is pretty much free of charge. The only thing I can think of that has…

Can you visit CMS? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Muon_Solenoid

Per https://cms.cern/interact-with-cms/on-site-visits, you can visit CMS if you book ~1 week out.
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