New Microscope Uses Antimatter To Produce Images

Big Nothing writes: "Researchers at the Military University in Munich, Germany have created an antimatter (positron) microscope for studying material defects. Read the brief news article at Scientific American."

Detecting Defects

[Anonymous Coward]

Quote from the article: "There is no other method which is as sensitive as a positron for detecting defects," I take issue with that statement. My wife is the most sensitive object on the planet for detecting defects.

Re:How much energy gets used/released?

[Christopher Thomas]

How much energy is needed to power this thing? And isn't there a lot of energy released when the positrons finally hit some electrons? Or does that energy get reabsorbed somehow?

The positrons produce gamma rays when they are finally annihilated in the target, which will ultimately end up as heat in your radiation shielding.

The positron source is a radioactive isotope that naturally emits positrons. This means that the total amount of energy involved will be quite low (very few positrons). It's a testament to the engineering skill of the people who built the microscope that they can get the results they do, with such a small number of positrons.

The radioactive isotope is probably produced by sticking a container of appropriate source material into a fission reactor's core for a few hours/days/weeks. That's how most medical isotopes are produced.

A positron microscope

[Genoaschild]

Sounds cool but can I see the crater of Luna with it?

If it is made of antimatter...

[whopis]

Then does it really matter?