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Toys Science

Cern Mass Produces Anti-Hydrogen 256

Posted by chrisd from the mr-fusion-not-far-behind dept.
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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Cern Mass Produces Anti-Hydrogen More

Cern Mass Produces Anti-Hydrogen

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  • insert Lame Star Trek Joke Here
  • *Blink* ... sorry, missed it, try again ;-)

  • Cool! (Score:1)

    by otuz ( 85014 )
    I wonder how this will affect the future of computing :)

  • some more links (Score:5, Informative)

    by tanveer1979 ( 530624 ) 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]

  • Would be to check if it falls down. Most theories predict that it should, but there are just enough interesting alternative theories of gravity that this certainly deserves verification.

    • Re:Actually one of the first experiments... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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.

  • ...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.

  • 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.

    • Re:I was lucky... (Score:2, Informative)

      by mt-biker ( 514724 )
      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.

    • Re:I was lucky... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Mt._Honkey ( 514673 )
      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.

      • Re:I was lucky... (Score:3, Informative)

        by jaoswald ( 63789 )
        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.
        • 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.

          How exactly is this done? It's something I've been wondering about for a while (I've seen descriptions of most other processes associated with particle accelerators).

    • Re:I was lucky... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by RichN ( 12819 )
      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".

    • Re:Um, a handful? (Score:1, Informative)

      by gazbo ( 517111 )
      Vague recollections here:

      1 mole of gas at RTP fills 24 litres (or was it 12?) and there are 6.022*10^23 atoms in a mole. So, assuming a handful is 10ML, it'll be have in the order of 20-21 zeros.

      Put another way, about 16 orders of magnitude over 50,000. But these are rough estimates from memory.

    • 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.
    • I believe a handful is the equivalent of .000000000000000000000000735 Libraries of Congress, or enough to span the width of .075 human hairs.
      • Wow... how many of those does it take to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool? What about a football field? If you lined them up end to end, how many times would they wrap around the equator, or stretch from Earth to the sun?

  • Funny, when an institute with a good reputation and high quality equipment publishes the plausible result of their experiments, someone else adds "maybe it's all not real". However when a bunch of people claim that they proved wrong the theory of special relativity with some cheap coax cables, it is left without an expression of doubt. (Not only on slashdot. Here, at least, the posters express their doubt.)

  • 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

    • Library of Congress

      Close to 80 terabits.

      eye-blink

      Equals 0.1 second. Yes, when you blink your eyes, you miss 10 whole frames of your precious Quake III. Would it be possible to detect closing of eyes and turn off rendering for a split second, giving those cycles to (e.g.) your niced distributed.net or Folding@home client?

      handful

      Depends on molar density (mol/L but not molarity because it isn't a solution). This is the only one I couldn't find a definite conversion factor for.

      human hair

      Close to 50 to 100 micrometers.

      football field

      Approximately 110 m, for both soccer and NFL football. Canadian fields are longer.

      football stadium

      NFL's Cleveland Browns play in a stadium [clevelandbrowns.com] with a volume of about 3 million cubic meters.

      100-watt-lightbulb-second

      Given that a watt of power is a joule of energy per second, this equals 100 joules. A kilowatt-hour equals 3.6 megajoules. A horsepower is about 750 watts, so a horsepower-hour is 2.7 megajoules.

      CowboyNeal

      Assume 90 kg.

    • Volume
      Old Unit: cubic centimeter, liter
      New Unit: state

  • 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

  • waste of power (Score:2, Interesting)

    by abdulwahid ( 214915 )

    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?

  • Antihydrogen has been made before, but only a handful of atoms at a time.

    A handfull? Wouldn't that be like... Millions and millions of atoms? Or am I seeing things in the wrong perspective here?

  • 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."
    • Reading the paper, I'd say the reason to be suspicious is that they seem to only have detected the radiation due to matter-anti-matter annihilation, with the requirement that an anti-proton and positron event happen at pretty much the same time and place. Then they use various comparisons to give additional confidence in the result.

      However, as they say, they can't tell what quantum state these atoms are in.

      Until they see [anti]hydrogen spectral lines, I'm not 100% sure they have real anti-hydrogen atoms; for now, I'd say 85% sure. Maybe Gabrielse knows of some ways that the same signature can be generated by other crap thrown around by the trapping and mixing processes.

  • 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"

    • Anyone see the daily show last night?

      Bush on Iraq: There's an old saying we have in Tennessee, in Texas, it's probably in Tennessee too. Fool me once, shame on... ... shame on you. ... ... ... ... ... Fool once not fool me again.
      In the grand scheme of things, it's not that important, but it is freakin' hilarious.
      • Actually, according to the transcript at whitehouse.gov [whitehouse.gov], the actual quote is:

        There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again.

        I cannot believe they actually post a word-for-word transcript in a press release on the white house website. It cracks me up. We elected a fucking rocket scientist didn't we?
    • "America is a very noble nation." *ducks*

  • 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... :)

  • Anyone Else... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Njoyda Sauce ( 211180 )
    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@ya[ ].com ['hoo' in gap]> 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.

    • I just want to see what happens when they stabilise it, then we can see both hydrogen, and his evil twin, anti-hydrogen, fight.


      Anti-hydrogen is the one with the goatee, right?

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

    ----------

  • I guess ... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Scholasticus ( 567646 )
    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..
  • Cool, how much per kilogram?

    I'll take a tonne. When can you deliver?

  • Cern Mass Produces Anti-Hydrogen = "Our long experience with these very difficult experiments warns that antihydrogen may not have really been produced."

    WTF. So even though they said themselves they are far from certain, you go ahead and post it as fact? Kudos to the editors too... Uhhhg...
  • One thing I've been wondering about anti-matter, does it have anti-gravity, which attracts other anti-matter but repels regular matter?

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