Antimatter Trapped For the First Time, This a big step

[Gentle Typhoon]

Antimatter Trapped For the First Time

Get ready for that warp drive spaceship, because we are now one step closer to it. After creating antihydrogen in their antiproton decelerator, scientists at CERN have been able to trap antimatter for the first time in history.

This a big step. First, it gets humanity closer to understanding one of the biggest mysteries of the Universe: What happened to all the antimatter that was created during the Big Bang? In theory, matter and antimatter were created in equal parts during the Big Bang. However, the latter disappeared shortly thereafter. Or at least, we can't seem to find it. The spokesman for CERN's ALPHA experiment—Jeffrey Hangst of Aarhus University, Denmark—says that trapping these atoms was a bit of an overwhelming experience:

What's new about Alpha is that now we've managed to hold on to those atoms. We have a magnetic bowl, kind of a bottle, that holds the antihydrogen [...] For reasons that no one yet understands, nature ruled out antimatter. It is thus very rewarding, and a bit overwhelming, to look at the ALPHA device and know that it contains stable, neutral atoms of antimatter.

CERN created the first nine atoms of antihydrogen in 1995, and then started to produce atoms in large quantities in 2002, as part of the ATHENA and ATRAP experiments. This is the first time that scientists have been able to trap antihydrogen atoms for a long enough time to study them, keeping them at 9 degrees kelvin (-443.47 degrees Fahrenheit, -264.15 degrees Celsius), suspended in a magnetic field inside this Ghostbusters-style machine.

The other reason why this is an important step is its potential to solve our need for unlimited energy. When antihydrogen touches matter—as shown in the image above—it releases a huge amount of energy. Many scientists speculate that antimatter may be the key to provide unlimited power capable of driving machines that are unthinkable right now. Eventually, it could be the stuff that could power new engines capable of taking us to the stars at near-light speed.

The energy per unit mass (9×1016 J/kg) is about 10 orders of magnitude greater than chemical energy, about 4 orders of magnitude greater than nuclear energy that can be liberated today using nuclear fission, and about 2 orders of magnitude greater than the best possible from fusion.

The reaction of 1 kilogram of antimatter with 1 kilogram of matter would produce 180 petajoules of energy or the rough equivalent of 43 megatons of TNT. For comparison, Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, reacted an estimated yield of 50 megatons, which required the use of hundreds of kilograms of fissile material.

Or maybe we will just manage to destroy the world in one big honkin explosion of strawberry and cherry goo. It can go either way.

But fear not, we are not there yet. At this stage, scientists are still trying to comprehend how antimatter works. This is one more—although very important—step in this quest.

Antimatter Trapped For the First Time

 

[Gentle Typhoon]

Antimatter bomb would be untraceable as there would be zero fallout of any kind of residue or radiation from the explosion. Basically you could make huge bombs with it and nobody would know which country detonated one.

 

[T-Rex]

What makes it certain that what they have trapped is indeed antimatter? Besides how can antimatter drive machines made with metals that cannot tolerate the extreme temperature?

 

[GUNS-N- ROSES]

guys we jumping too far ahead. lets jus congrats the scientists and hope the mysteries of universe keep unfolding step by step.

 

[SomeGuy]

What makes it certain that what they have trapped is indeed antimatter? Besides how can antimatter drive machines made with metals that cannot tolerate the extreme temperature?

The same types of nuclear reactions that power nuclear warheads are being used to generate power in nuclear power stations.

It's just a question of scale and controlling the reaction so that it doesn't go out of control and blow everything up.

I am sceptical though - I mean how much power is required to make antimatter?

 

[Avatar]

I guess it's more useful in producing energy for power hungry nations rather than blowing the world to bits eh ?

 

[SomeGuy]

Antimatter bomb would be untraceable as there would be zero fallout of any kind of residue or radiation from the explosion. Basically you could make huge bombs with it and nobody would know which country detonated one.

Given the difficulty in making antimatter, if there was a antimatter detonation, the list of suspect countries would be extremely short.

 

[Laughing Buddha]

In antimatter-matter collisions resulting in photon emission, the entire rest mass of the particles is converted to kinetic energy. The energy per unit mass (9×1016 J/kg) is about 10 orders of magnitude greater than chemical energy (compared to TNT at 4.2×106 J/kg, and formation of water at 1.56×107 J/kg), about 4 orders of magnitude greater than nuclear energy that can be liberated today using nuclear fission (about 200 MeV per atomic nucleus that undergoes nuclear fission,[31] or 8×1013 J/kg), and about 2 orders of magnitude greater than the best possible from fusion (about 6.3×1014 J/kg for the proton-proton chain). The reaction of 1 kg of antimatter with 1 kg of matter would produce 1.8×1017 J (180 petajoules) of energy (by the mass-energy equivalence formula E = mc&#178, or the rough equivalent of 43 megatons of TNT. For comparison, Tsar Bomb, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, reacted an estimated yield of 50 megatons, which required the use of tens of kilograms[citation needed] of fissile material (Uranium/Plutonium) (hundreds for the full-yield 100 megaton design), and two tons of lithium deuteride (fusion fuel).[32]

Not all of that energy can be utilized by any realistic propulsion technology, because as much as 50% of energy produced in reactions between nucleons and antinucleons is carried away by neutrinos in these applications, so, for all intents and purposes, it can be considered lost.[33]

Antimatter rocketry ideas, such as the redshift rocket, propose the use of antimatter as fuel for interplanetary travel or possibly interstellar travel. Since the energy density of antimatter is vastly higher than conventional fuels, the thrust to weight equation for such craft would be very different from conventional spacecraft.

The scarcity of antimatter means that it is not readily available to be used as fuel, although it could be used in antimatter catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion for space applications. Generating a single antiproton is immensely difficult and requires particle accelerators and vast amounts of energy — millions of times more than is released after it is annihilated with ordinary matter due to inefficiencies in the process. Known methods of producing antimatter from energy also produce an equal amount of normal matter, so the theoretical limit is that half of the input energy is converted to antimatter. Counterbalancing this, when antimatter annihilates with ordinary matter, energy equal to twice the mass of the antimatter is liberated — so energy storage in the form of antimatter could (in theory) be 100% efficient.

For more regular (earthly) applications however (e.g. regular transport, use in portable generators, powering of cities, ...), artificially created antimatter is not a suitable energy carrier, despite its high energy density, because the process of creating antimatter involves a large amount of wasted energy and is extremely inefficient. According to CERN, only one part in ten billion (10−10) of the energy invested in the production of antimatter particles can be subsequently retrieved.[34]

Antimatter production is currently very limited, but has been growing at a nearly geometric rate[citation needed] since the observation of the first antiproton in 1955 by Segrè and Chamberlain.[35] The current antimatter production rate is between 1 and 10 nanograms per year, and this is expected to increase to between 3 and 30 nanograms per year by 2015 or 2020 with new superconducting linear accelerator facilities at CERN and Fermilab.

Some researchers claim that with current technology, it is possible to obtain antimatter for US$25 million per gram by optimizing the collision and collection parameters (given current electricity generation costs). Antimatter production costs, in mass production, are almost linearly tied in with electricity costs, so economical pure-antimatter thrust applications are unlikely to come online without the advent of such technologies as deuterium-tritium fusion power (assuming that such a power source actually would prove to be cheap).

Many experts, however, dispute these claims as being far too optimistic by many orders of magnitude. They point out that in 2004, the annual production of antiprotons at CERN was several picograms at a cost of $20 million. This means to produce 1 gram of antimatter, CERN would need to spend 100 quadrillion dollars and run the antimatter factory for 100 billion years.

Storage is another problem, as antiprotons are negatively charged and repel against each other, so that they cannot be concentrated in a small volume. Plasma oscillations in the charged cloud of antiprotons can cause instabilities that drive antiprotons out of the storage trap. For these reasons, to date only a few million antiprotons have been stored simultaneously in a magnetic trap, which corresponds to much less than a femtogram. Antihydrogen atoms or molecules are neutral so in principle they do not suffer the plasma problems of antiprotons described above. But cold antihydrogen is far more difficult to produce than antiprotons.

One researcher of the CERN laboratories, which produces antimatter regularly, said:

If we could assemble all of the antimatter we've ever made at CERN and annihilate it with matter, we would have enough energy to light a single electric light bulb for a few minutes.[36]

 

[Patriotic_Pakistani]

Full ahead Warp Factor 1

 

[Vajra_Yuddh]

I guess it's more useful in producing energy for power hungry nations rather than blowing the world to bits eh ?

Wonder if our government has thought about it rather than fighting for "kursi" all the time. It would be amazing if BARC or DRDO scientists could get in touch with this sort of anti-matter energy generating technology. India's oil imports would be massively reduced and so would shortage of power all over the country.


All the best to the scientists who have achieved this.

 

[Nair saab]

The dream of unlimited energy is gonna be fulfilled in the coming years.. experiment are carried out on large hadron collider (LHC) very exciting...

 

[unicorn]

Anti matter trapped but for a very small amount of time and also it is very expensive to create.The real scientific achievement for them when they get the observational evidence of the Higgs boson.