Earlier quoted context omitted.
Each antiproton annihilation releases 0.3 nJ. So for ~100 antiprotons, one would get 30 nJ which is equivalent to 7 picograms of TNT.
Now, is it safe to eat?
Probably, but I doubt there'd be much flavour
CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe
81–90 of 188 posts
Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe
#82Last 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.
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 a waiting period is if you want to visit the actual tunnels, you can only visit them in between experiments (every 10-20 years maybe even less often).
More info: https://visit.cern/
Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe
#83Last 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.
You know, I never considered that it would be open to the public / tourism, I just added it to my bucket list.
I mean I don't know much about the science they do other than the popular science summaries, but it's super interesting.
Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe this was already settled? Didn’t it just experience gravity the same way?
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?
Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe
#85Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe
#86Last 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.
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.
One great way to enjoy the visit and get an idea of what you are looking at is to pick something very specific, like some connector or box, and ask what it does. Then ask what happens when it fails. The answer to the later question is almost invariably interesting - even in relatively mundane places like a power plant or fire truck.
Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe
#87"Portable Antimatter Containment is here, and slowly getting better." is not a sentence I expected to write to friends, but I just did.
Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really. https://home.cern/news/news/experiments/base-experiment-take... Not even a cool new hazmat placard.
That’s because it’s not really a hazardous material. 70 antiprotons annihilating with 70 protons releases a grand total of 2×10⁻⁸ Joules.
Yeah. I bet in practice the liquid helium used to cool the trap is more dangerous than the actual antimater. It can cause cryogenic burns similar to frostbite, and if it suddenly boils off in a confined space (like inside a container or the back of a truck) it can displace oxygen and cause inert gas asphyxiation.
Of course both of these can be managed easily with appropriate procedures.
It is a bit like getting injured by pinching your hand in the hinge of the Velociraptor container in Jurrassic park. Not the first danger you would think of, but still present.
Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe
#89Last 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.
> The ridiculously advanced technology required to produce only a few picograms of antimatter is truly impressive.
Also the persistence that is required because of the low "return on investment" is staggering. Another article linked from this one said:
> The authors had to mix 10 million positrons with 700 million antiprotons in order to get get 38 certifiable antihydrogen events.
Re: CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Has there been research on more efficient ways to generate antiprotons? (By the way anti-hydrogen isn't how you would store it as anti-hydrogen can't be trapped.)
Anti-hydrogen is routinely trapped in magnetic traps at CERN.
If anyone is curious how, I think this is vaguely the idea: https://alpha.web.cern.ch/science/2-trapping-antihydrogen
tl;dr: strong magnetic fields in a certain configuration since in a strong enough field anti-hydrogen acts like little bar magnets.