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Cern Mass Produces Anti-Hydrogen

Posted by chrisd on Thu Sep 19, 2002 05:08 AM
from the mr-fusion-not-far-behind dept.
Toys Science
Izeickl writes "The BBC is reporting Here about scientists in the Cern particle accelerator in Geneva, Switzerland have mass produced over 50,000 atoms allowing them to test basic Physics using them, however "Harvard physicist Gerald Gabrielse said: "Our long experience with these very difficult experiments warns that antihydrogen may not have really been produced.""
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  • some more links (Score:5, Informative)

    by tanveer1979 (530624) <web@@@tanveer...in> on Thursday September 19 2002, @05:18AM (#4287497) Homepage Journal
    This has meen dome before but its the first time 50000 atoms have been produced. A little more tech info.

    From the horses mouth :-) Athena, the guys who did it [web.cern.ch]
    Nature.com article(PDF) [web.cern.ch]
    home page of the experiment [web.cern.ch]

  • ...to finally spent my billion dollars, see this story. [slashdot.org]

    Now I know how I want to illuminate my garden!

    Making antiprotons requires 10 billion times more energy than it produces. For example, the antimatter produced each year at Cern could power a 100 watt light bulb for just 15 minutes.
      • "You'd never need oil again, or anything at all except a antiproton factory." ....except billions of times the outputted energy to make them in the first place. While it may have implications for portable fuel, it seems a little hard to believe we will be having anti-fuel for a while.

  • Those wacky scientists... (Score:4, Funny)

    by tuxedo-steve (33545) on Thursday September 19 2002, @05:31AM (#4287528)
    Our long experience with these very difficult experiments warns that antihydrogen may not have really been produced.
    We've produced antihydrogen... just kidding!

    We've discovered Earth-like extrasolar planets... just kidding!

    We've found bacterial life from Mars... just kidding!

    Jeez, these scientist guys need a hobby. :)

  • What a coincidence (Score:3, Funny)

    by karb (66692) on Thursday September 19 2002, @05:39AM (#4287545)
    scientists ... have mass produced over 50,000 atoms allowing them to test basic Physics using [antihydrogen]

    I also have just mass produced over 50,000 antihydrogen atoms!

    however "Harvard physicist Gerald Gabrielse said: "Our long experience with these very difficult experiments warns that antihydrogen may not have really been produced."

    Also, _my_ long experience with antihydrogen tells me I may have not _really_ produced antihydrogen!

    Look, supernintendo chalmers! I'm learneding!

  • I was lucky... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mister Transistor (259842) on Thursday September 19 2002, @05:40AM (#4287550) Journal
    Enough to actually get to see the antimatter production ring at Fermilab. Once or twice a year, they go into a maintenance shutdown and give small informal tours.

    What used to be the main ring years ago is now the antimatter ring. The magnets were all upgraded to superconductors, and they added buncher/debunchers to the ring to squeeze protons together and apart which, every so often produces a stray anti-proton.

    Cern is way ahead of Fermi in that they are producing full anti-atoms, whereas Fermi is only making anti-particles.

    Definitely forget about efficiency in production, the guy giving the tour said their electric bill is about a million dollars a month, and they make very few anti-protons from all that power! I bet they're ComEd's best customer. They can't run during the summer air-conditioning months, as they would suck too much energy from the grid in Illinois.

    The guide also said as long as the magnets stay supercooled, the anti-protons will stay suspended in the ring for up to a month (unless they hit stray matter and blow up sooner).

    After the tour, we got to play stump the genius - one of the research physicists there was nice enough to give a Q & A session. A most informative and cool tour, getting to see something that most "civilians" never get to lay eyes on.

    • IMO, CERN's press release [web.cern.ch] is much more informative than the BBC article.

      But CERN's intranet is also readily searchable [search.cern.ch] and apart from the technical details on the new LHC accelerator (which are publically available and make great geek reading) I also find [web.cern.ch]
      this further information on the AD (Antiproton Decelerator), which makes the trapping of antiparticles possible.
    • You say they make very ffew antiprotons from all that power, and I guess that in human terms that is correct. However, I'm looking at live readouts [fnal.gov] at the Tevatron status, and there are currently 48.38*10^10 anti-protons in the antiproton storage ring you speak of, and another 246.92*10^9 in the Tevatron itself.

      Just you give you a sense of how much antimatter is produced. Cern didn't produce much antimattter at all with these 50,000 atoms. Fermilab doesn't produce any antiatoms because they have no use for them. Only negative antiprotons (pbars) are of any use.
      • In comparing the quantities, you should keep in mind that the storage rings you are talking about have very "hot" (high kinetic energy) antiprotons.

        The real achievement is to cool the antiprotons down to about 15 K, and combining them with positrons. The yield of that whole process is very low. I.e., you need large quantities of hot antiprotons to produce 50k atoms of "cold" antihydrogen.
    • What used to be the main ring years ago is now the antimatter ring.

      Sorry. What used to be the main ring is no longer in service. The Antiproton source was operational when the main ring was being used.

      In recent years, we've added the main injector and recycler rings, to help store the antiprotons left over from the collider studies (since they're so costly to make.)

      I bet they're ComEd's best customer.

      Fermi has its own feed from ComEd. In the past, ComEd has been Fermilab's best customer; they pay/credit Fermi in order to tap off some of the capacity. I don't believe this happened this summer, though (since we're in a Collider Run).

  • Um, a handful? (Score:5, Funny)

    by richie2000 (159732) <rickard.olsson@gmail.com> on Thursday September 19 2002, @05:42AM (#4287554) Homepage Journal
    Antihydrogen has been made before, but only a handful of atoms at a time.
    Now, the Cern particle accelerator in Geneva, Switzerland, has produced more than 50,000.

    Sooo, exactly how many hydrogen atoms are in a handful anyway? My first guess would be in the ballpark of "A hell of a lot more than 50k".

    • I'm willing to stipulate that combining a "handful" of antihydrogen atoms with a hand of any sort results in not having much of a hand left, nor arm, nor good part of the city you're standing in.

  • Dimensional Analysis (Score:5, Funny)

    by Wrexen (151642) on Thursday September 19 2002, @05:49AM (#4287572) Homepage
    It's clear at this point that the standard "SI" or metric system is no longer sufficient to describe the events in today's world. As such, the "PS", or "Pop Science" unit system is defined below for those interested by this handy guide

    Information
    Old Unit: bit
    New Unit: Library of Congress

    Time Interval
    Old Unit: second
    New Unit: eye-blink

    Number of Particles
    Old Unit: mole
    New Unit: handful

    Width (small distances)
    Old Unit: millimeter
    New Unit: human hair

    Length (large distances)
    Old Unit: meter, kilometer
    New Unit: football field

    Volume
    Old Unit: cubic centimeter, liter
    New Unit: football stadium

    Energy
    Old Unit: joule
    New Unit: 100-watt-lightbulb-second

    Mass
    Old Unit: gram, kilogram
    New Unit: CowboyNeal

    More units will be assigned as they are needed
      • No, no, no... The industry standard for "really big sizes" is always either "Rhode Island" or "Texas". Example: http://www.cnn.com/US/9908/18/iceberg/ "Rhode Island-sized iceberg moves into Antarctic ship lanes"

  • Still Waiting for AntiMethane (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 19 2002, @05:53AM (#4287579)
    When's it going to happen dammit? I'm dying here. My brother is like a bog in that he produces cubic FEET of methane on a daily basis. And I have been waiting for the day when somebody produces antimethane. Once someone has made antimethane I will put some of it in my brother's boxers and wait for the fireworks and subsequent explosion. Then I will get his room that bastard.
  • well, if they didn't really produce anihydrogen, then its gonna be even longer before they can produce antideuterium, so i guess were all gonna have to wait even longer for warp engines

  • Making antiprotons requires 10 billion times more energy than it produces. For example, the antimatter produced each year at Cern could power a 100 watt light bulb for just 15 minutes.

    10 billion lightbulbs! So, they used enough electricity to power a small city for a whole year and the result is....they might have been fooled into a false positive result. I am sure there are lots of better ways of using this power rather than chasing gold at bottoms of rainbows

    • Yea and why did we bother wasteing the time and money it took to learn to fly, we could have bought more cars/gas with that money, and speaking of cars do you know how many horses we could have fed with that R&D?

      This is a new and exciting field which could someday make space travel practical (for no toher reason than you can store alot of energy in a small area). The more you do it the better you get at it, and the cheaper it gets.

      By the way, hows that flat world working out for you?

            • 1) First, this is a drop in the bucket. CERN is one of only a few entities using this kind of power. Take a look at the 55,000 home figure. Say these are your Asian homes, and you end up with 550,000 homes that could be powered by the energy used at CERN. Given the masses of humanity, that adds up to NOTHING. Certainly not enough to justify the potentially disastrous consequences to humanity that could result if we stop this kind of research. The average utility bill at Fermilab (US counterpart to CERN) is 1.5 million dollars. Over the course of a year, thats $18 million. In comparison, the USAID annual budget is $6 billion. The Federal Highway program's budget on the other hand, is $26 billion. Yes, people would rather fix potholes than develop countries. Such is the world we live in. But its not like research money is coming out of the mouths of the poor. The real problem isn't that the world spends too much on research (if only). The real problem is that people have no clue about anything outside the bounds of their tiny meaningless existance. For example, most people, when survayed, said that they thought the US spends too much on foreign aid. When asked how much they thought was appropriate, they said 5% of the budget. The real figure is one-tenth of that number. There are dozens of things you can do to make up the cost of this research, including improving distribution methods, bringing down cultural barries that make access to healthcare inefficient, reforming patent conventions that jack up the cost of medications, etc. In the end, science is not the thing to sacrifice for humanity. BTW, I grew up learning stuff about international development from my dad (that's his line of work), and I was born in Thailand and spent part of my childhood in Bangladesh. I *do* know what I'm talking about.

              2) We're not talking about the "many marvelous inventions in the last, say, 20 years." We're talking about how physics has redefined the universe was we know it over the last 200 years. A large percentage of the modern economy owes its existance to quantum physics. The work at CERN is simply an extension of the very ancient search for knowledge about the structure of matter. Anytime you get a cat-scan or an X-ray, take medicine, use a computer, drive a car, watch TV, etc, you're directly benifeting from that research. Even those in inpovrished countries should thank this research for allowing scientists to use advanced imaging tehnologies to create things like TB vaccines that sells for dollars per dose. Going into the future, the only sure way to relieve poverty is to find more resources. It is not possible for the human population to keep growing, expanding, evolving, reaching towards a higher state of being, without more raw matter. So yes, that warp drive space ship WILL help the guy living in poverty, if you stop being so short-sighted. Giving a man a fish is not the only way to help him.

  • Jealousy... (Score:3, Funny)

    by JimPooley (150814) on Thursday September 19 2002, @06:09AM (#4287611) Homepage
    Harvard physicist Gerald Gabrielse said: "Our long experience with these very difficult experiments warns that antihydrogen may not have really been produced."

    Meanwhile scientists at CERN say "The yanks are just jealous because we beat them to it."

  • George Bush says... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MosesJones (55544) on Thursday September 19 2002, @06:15AM (#4287629) Homepage
    "We must stop these anti-hydrogen terrorists, I am informed that hydrogen is in things we use everyday like coke, and is even vital to Americans' survival. These people who are anti-hydrogen are anti-american and are seeking to destroy the very basis of our society, you can not be a friend of america if you are not a friend of hydrogen"

      • Tries for GWB to get masters =1, Tries for Al Gore = at least 2, (and he failed out of divinity school, cmon how do you fail God school??)
      • Don't you know that not being in the United States only means it is a prime candidated for being bombed to oblivion as a source of terrorist materials or taken over by the DoD. The United States doesn't need to destroy or take over things it already possesses. Why do you think it has so many overseas bases.

  • Mass-produced? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 19 2002, @06:25AM (#4287650)
    The BBC is reporting Here about scientists in the Cern particle accelerator in Geneva, Switzerland have mass produced over 50,000 atoms allowing them to test basic...

    Wouldn't it be a bit more correct to say that that've been anti-mass-produced? ;-)
  • Harvard physicist Gerald Gabrielse said: "Our long experience with these very difficult experiments warns that antihydrogen may not have really been produced."

    "Shit! Those pesky Swiss folks got there first. Quick, let's discredit them. After all, that's what professional scientists do."

  • Combine with anti-oxygen and... (Score:5, Funny)

    by shoppa (464619) on Thursday September 19 2002, @06:42AM (#4287691)
    Now all they need to do is
    1. make some anti-oxygen
    2. combine it with anti-hydrogen in a 2:1 ratio
    3. to make anti-water
    4. Drink it and you get thirsty!

  • Description of Antihydrogen... (Score:5, Informative)

    by cyrek (556620) on Thursday September 19 2002, @07:09AM (#4287754) Homepage

    There's a simple and to-the-point description of Antihydrogen [wikipedia.org] at the Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].

    Bizarrely, the person responsible for the original submission is typing this sentence right now. Thankfully, brighter people have improved upon it somewhat since then... :)

  • Find it odd that this was filed under toys? It'd certainly be the biggest most expensive toy on the market.

  • Anti-hydrogen (Score:4, Funny)

    by balloonhead (589759) <doncuan@NOspaM.yahoo.com> on Thursday September 19 2002, @07:27AM (#4287830)
    I just want to see what happens when they stabilise it, then we can see both hydrogen, and his evil twin, anti-hydrogen, fight.

  • A slight glow emits everytime they turn this
    thing on.

    ----------
  • for a handful the hand would have to be really, really small. By the way, has anybody thought about the fact that even if we could produce antihydrogen in large quantities, it would be pretty useless as a source of energy. Since its charge would be neutral, you couldn't contain it magnetically. You would have to use antiprotons or an anti-element with a positive or negative charge..

    • of course it will fall down.

      it's anti-hyrogen, and hydrogen falls up, just ask Herr Hindenburg.
      • Actually in vacuum hydrogen would fall down. And those anti-matter particles are created in vacuum (held in place by strong electromagnets).. but they probably wouldn't "fall up", because the only thing that differs between particle and antiparticle is it's spin. (it's not really the speed particle is rotating at.. but more like internal momentum).
        • because the only thing that differs between particle and antiparticle is it's spin

          that's wrong, it's the electric charge that is opposite for particles and their antiparticles. The total spin (magnitude of spin) is the same for both and the actual spin vector is not a fixed property for a particle (except when it's zero).
    • Would be to check if it falls down.

      It would fall down because it has the same mass as matter. Antimatter does not have negative mass. Instead, each particle has opposite charge. One antihydrogen atom is composed of an antiproton (negative charge, same mass as the proton), and a positron (positive charge, same mass as the electron).

      On checking in which directory it falls, I think gravity is negligible compared to other forces at the particle level.

    • Our last president attacked the Yugo's not becaus eof their strenght but because he had to admint "I *DID* have sexual relations with that woman, Ms Lewinski"

      While I say if the inspectors are there, tommorow, and can go anywhere they want (when they want) dont attack. I doubt this is really the case, there are U@ photographs from the last batch of inspectors showing truckload of equipment being moved hours before UN inspectors show up. Iraq is not holding up to its end of the bargin to end the 1991 Gulf war..

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