CERN Gears Up To Ship Antimatter Across Europe (arstechnica.com) 55
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: There's a lot of matter around, which ensures that any antimatter produced experiences a very short lifespan. Studying antimatter, therefore, has been extremely difficult. But that's changed a bit in recent years, as CERN has set up a facility that produces and traps antimatter, allowing for extensive studies of its properties, including entire anti-atoms. Unfortunately, the hardware used to capture antiprotons also produces interference that limits the precision with which measurements can be made. So CERN decided that it might be good to determine how to move the antimatter away from where it's produced. Since it was tackling that problem anyway, CERN decided to make a shipping container for antimatter, allowing it to be put on a truck and potentially taken to labs throughout Europe. [...]
Overall, the hardware stayed cold, generally at a bit over 5 Kelvin. The exception was when the system was reconnected to the antimatter source hardware and the system reconnected to the electrical system at CERN. While those actions show up as temperature spikes, the superconducting magnets remained well under 7 Kelvin. An accelerometer was in place to track the forces experienced by the hardware while the truck was moving. This showed that changes in the truck's speed produced turbulence in the liquid helium, making measurements of its presence unreliable. Levels had dropped from about 75 percent of maximum to 30 percent by the time the system was reconnected, suggesting that liquid helium presents the key limiting factor in shipping. Measurements made while the system was in transit suggest that the whole process occurred losslessly, meaning that not a single proton escaped during the entire transport. The findings have been published in the journal Nature.
Overall, the hardware stayed cold, generally at a bit over 5 Kelvin. The exception was when the system was reconnected to the antimatter source hardware and the system reconnected to the electrical system at CERN. While those actions show up as temperature spikes, the superconducting magnets remained well under 7 Kelvin. An accelerometer was in place to track the forces experienced by the hardware while the truck was moving. This showed that changes in the truck's speed produced turbulence in the liquid helium, making measurements of its presence unreliable. Levels had dropped from about 75 percent of maximum to 30 percent by the time the system was reconnected, suggesting that liquid helium presents the key limiting factor in shipping. Measurements made while the system was in transit suggest that the whole process occurred losslessly, meaning that not a single proton escaped during the entire transport. The findings have been published in the journal Nature.
Soon to follow (Score:1)
miniature "black holes" in a "stasis field" to block the cripple radiation.
Re:Soon to follow (Score:5, Funny)
Here's a live streaming view of CERN lab as they carry out the experiment in realtime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Ah, so the video has moved to YouTube now, after the original's death. Nice.
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Yep. I had to search a bit for it too. Warning, can frighten small children and adults with minds on that level!
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Well, yeah, but it has always had that 2008 year on it, which was a bit of a giveaway.
Re:Antimatter is the science equivalent of (Score:5, Insightful)
No, antimatter particles on contact with appropriate matter produce photons of definite energies, while thoughts and prayers produce absolutely nothing.
Re:Antimatter is the science equivalent of (Score:5, Funny)
Just like in politics.
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For the people doing "thoughts and prayers" they might induce a good feeling.
You know: this thoughts and prayers thing, that is genetic. Some have the genes, some have not. It maps directly to a brain area, and can be measured with a PET scan.
Stupid uneducated idiot.
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Stupid uneducated idiot.
Thanks for introducing yourself, but we know who you are.
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For the people doing "thoughts and prayers" they might induce a good feeling.
You know: this thoughts and prayers thing, that is genetic. Some have the genes, some have not. It maps directly to a brain area, and can be measured with a PET scan.
Stupid uneducated idiot.
Sure, for the person doing "thoughts and prayers" they might feel good, but that doesn't translate to the person on the other end. That's the point. It's useless. It's like the googles. They do nothing.
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It maps directly to a brain area, and can be measured with a PET scan.
You're claiming that self delusion is clinically measureable? Ha!
Evidence is going to be required for this one.
confidence level (Score:2)
Depends on how low you set the bar for that evidence.
There has been some fMRI (== functional MRI; using MRI to show activation of brain regions. MRI == (nuclear) Magnetic Resonnange Imaging, a type of non-ionising imaging of the brain) exploratory imaging of religious people, but on very small groups (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2686228/).
There are meta analysis regarding the relationships between genes and religiosity. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X20301925)
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Cognition is more than just the connectome.
Our minds swim in a pool of chemical signals, triggers and modifiers.
Ignoring that is a mistake. Every brain is broken in a unique manner. Data analysis provides hints of inner function and in some cases can roughly model the data being processed but we are some way away from making declarative statements about internal states based on electrical activity alone.
Claiming there is a genetic reason for religiousty is wrong. It would be more accurate to say that certa
Dead salmon (Score:2)
It maps directly to a brain area, and can be measured with a PET scan.
Stupid uneducated idiot.
There's a lot of things you can measure with a PET scan, including on a dead salmon.
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Feelings matter (Score:2)
For the people doing "thoughts and prayers" they might induce a good feeling.
People who rely on Thoughts and Prayers make me sad. So it's a net zero for total feelings in the system.
Not a single antiproton escaped (Score:2)
Re:Not a single antiproton escaped (Score:5, Informative)
That's what I thought, given that protons are ten a penny (actually 10^24 a penny) and hardly worth transporting around. But the summary in Ars has the answer:
To confirm it all works, the team loaded it up with some protons (which are notably easier to produce)
Re: Not a single antiproton escaped (Score:2)
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annihilated in the containment is possible, and perhaps more comforting than having one escape to be annihilated in a person.
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Actually, it was protons. What the summary failed to include is that they have not actually shipped antimatter yet, just tested a potential method of shipping using (much cheaper) protons.
Porch pirates, beware... (Score:2)
The first thief to swipe an antimatter shipment is in for a REAL surprise. So is whatever city he happens to. Be in.
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Assuming they might randomly capture 10% of the particles they produce and the other 90% are annihilated in the particle accelerator, I don't think these single atoms are the threat you think they are.
Re:Porch pirates, beware... (Score:5, Informative)
How so?
Suppose they have a million protons - which is a really large amount of antimatter considering they make them one by one.
The proton mass is about 1GeV, so from the annihilation of a proton/antiproton pair you'll get a total energy of 2GeV. Let's also say that all those annihilate simultaneously in the laboratory reference frame. That's a total output of 2GeV * 1 million particles, or about 0.0003 joules in several high-energy gamma photons for each annihilating pair.
These photons go through ordinary matter without hardly noticing it - high energy enough to have low reaction cross-sections for Compton of photoeffect, too low to generate a significant shower from charged particle creation.
The sound from the air rushing into the container will be a lot more audible.
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They'll just counter by creating anti-porch-pirates that don't show up in normal security cameras.
Surprise is on You (Score:3)
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Yea, pries open the lid and dies from asphyxiation as liquid helium boils off rapidly.
They've been doing this since the 1980s (Score:3)
I thought Penning traps were used for this since decades?
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Re:They've been doing this since the 1980s (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. But making the mobile was an engineering challenge. Which has now been solved and that is what the story is about.
The path to Stein;Gate has been opened! (Score:2)
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Bah, sci-fi come lately. Obviously we need Scotty.
Angels & Demons cosplayers (Score:2)
Their dedication to authenticity is impressive.
In other news (Score:2)
The next James Bond adventure (Score:3)
The producers now have the background for the plot of their next film.
Re:The next James Bond adventure (Score:4, Informative)
They may get sued for copyright infringement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: The next James Bond adventure (Score:2)
They might get sued, but unlikely as heck to lose. How many movies and TV shows feature a time bomb that needs to be found and defused in the nick of time. The threat elements in entertainment get used over and over and don't belong to any one author. ;) of copyright enough to get a judge to find infringement.
The problem would come from copying the plot elements and even that could run into difficulty trying for a win.
Of course, anti matter could blur the lines
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They may get sued for copyright infringement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
James Bond has prior art, the plot of Goldfinger was to irradiate the US gold stockpiles with a nuclear bomb (making Goldfinger gold more valuable). I'm sure this is not the only Bond film to have a nuclear device at the centre of the plot. The Spy Who Loved Me had the villain stealing entire nuclear missile submarines.
So they wont ship things with batteries (Score:2)
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Look at the quantities involved. The only thing dangerous is the cooling system and that is well under control.
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Of course you can ship batteries, and things with batteries. You only have to use ground (or water) shipment and proper labeling. Devices with small batteries can even be sent by air, though only at a 30% SoC [iata.org].
How small can you get this? (Score:2)
What's next? Antimatter bombs? Antimatter bullets?
Probably not (Score:3)
Nuclear fission is powerful enough and a lot easier and quicker to build. Go for fusion if you want a bit more bang.
Re: Probably not (Score:2)
And a lot easier to ship. Heck, we can ship that fusion reaction device from one continent to another continent in a single hop. Bada bing bada BOOM.
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Nope. Look at the quantities involved. Antimatter will not be a material to be used in anything except research for the foreseeable future. No danger here.
Hehehehe, nice! (Score:3)
And, relevant link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] ;-)
Always exciting to see good research being done!
Oh goodie (Score:2)
This ought to ... (Score:2)