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Scientists create antimatter

06:44 / 19.09.02

From ananova.com 18/9/02:

Scientists claim antimatter breakthrough

Scientists have announced the first large-scale production of antimatter.

A team based at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Geneva say they have developed a large amount of the substance.

Antimatter is a reverse form of ordinary matter. When the two kinds of matter meet they annihilate each other in an enormous burst of energy.

It's this process which provides the power source for Starship Enterprise in its film and TV space adventures.

Physicists have made only very small quantities of antimatter before. But the CERN team say they have made at least 50,000 atoms of anti-hydrogen, the antimatter counterpart of normal hydrogen.

They admit the achievement will not lead to starship-style warp drives - at least not in the foreseeable future.

But it could help scientists answer some of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the universe.

Team member Professor Michael Charlton from the University of Wales at Swansea said: "This is a milestone that has opened up new horizons, to enable scientists to study symmetry in nature and explore the fundamental laws of physics which govern the universe."

He says it will also help scientists address what happened to the antimatter created in the Big Bang.

According to Nature, the CERN scientists used sophisticated electric and magnetic field traps and ultra-low temperatures to generate the anti-atoms.

Exciting, what? So, how long do we think it will be before we're sailing the trade routes between the stars?

Or, perhaps, before we have a REALLY BIG bomb?

Reed Richards would be proud.

09:19 / 19.09.02

What are the potential uses for anti-matter anyway? Are there any commercial or scientific uses that are forward thinking rather than purely to do with big-bang-related cosmology?

The Natural Way

09:28 / 19.09.02

Yeah, is it viable as an energy source? It's obviously not so easy to create it....or is it?

11:41 / 19.09.02

I guess energy generation is the main one- though you'll certainly need to put in more than you get out, at the minute.

14:36 / 19.09.02

How does antimatter *looks* like? I can't picture such a thing...

15:56 / 19.09.02

My understanding of it is if you can imagine the mirror image of a proton (i.e. an antiproton), that's antimatter.

18:37 / 19.09.02

I'm not sure if the anti-matter and matter particles annihilating each other produces some kind of energy. If not it would be a pretty useless exercise.

Unless, of course, matter was sent to the anti-matter dimension upon contact with anti-matter. And Annihilus collected it all on his asteroid.

Professor Silly

14:50 / 20.09.02

One way of looking at this: a proton represents a wave/particle traveling with us in time, while an anti-proton travels the other way in time, i.e. into the past. Thus energy travels "back and forth" through time, and we call that energy that travels the same direction as our consciousness "positive" and the other "anti-positive"....

This could lead to breakthroughs in time travel.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

23:32 / 20.09.02

this is by far one of the coolest things we have nerded about around here.
i am curious how one makes anti matter, and if it DOES travel rear wise through time, are we actually creating it now, or sending it back to ourselves from some future time?

05:21 / 21.09.02

• What can antimatter be used for?
There are several different uses for antimatter, the main one being for medical diagnostics where positrons are used to help identify different diseases with the Positron Emission Tomography (or PET scan)to reveal the workings of the brain. For other uses, we are still in the first phases of development and it's difficult to foresee what will happen in the next ten years!

• Can we use antimatter to propel a car or a spaceship?
In principle, yes, but in practice it is very difficult. You all know that the Star Trek Spaceship Enterprise flies around powered by antimatter. But in reality, making antimatter is so difficult that it is hard to foresee it ever being used as a propellant fuel. In order to propel a matter spacecraft weighing several tons up to the speed of light, you would need an equal amount of antimatter and, using the present technology, it would take millions and millions of years to produce a sufficient amount.

http://livefromcern.web.cern.ch/livefromcern/antimatter/FAQ.html

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

10:23 / 22.09.02

I thought it was tachyon's reputed to go back through time and not anti-matter?