I think your refering to Doesntmatter
Posted on 11/17/2010 2:08:43 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Antimatter atoms have been trapped for the first time, scientists say.
Researchers at Cern, home of the Large Hadron Collider, have held 38 antihydrogen atoms in place, each for a fraction of a second.
Antihydrogen has been produced before but it was instantly destroyed when it encountered normal matter.
The team, reporting in Nature, says the ability to study such antimatter atoms will allow previously impossible tests of fundamental tenets of physics.
The current "standard model" of physics holds that each particle - protons, electrons, neutrons and a zoo of more exotic particles - has its mirror image antiparticle.
The antiparticle of the electron, for example, is the positron, and is used in an imaging technique of growing popularity known as positron emission tomography.
However, one of the great mysteries in physics is why our world is made up overwhelmingly of matter, rather than antimatter; the laws of physics make no distinction between the two and equal amounts should have been created at the Universe's birth.
Slowing anti-atoms
Producing antimatter particles like positrons and antiprotons has become commonplace in the laboratory, but assembling the particles into antimatter atoms is far more tricky.
That was first accomplished by two groups in 2002. But handling the "antihydrogen" - bound atoms made up of an antiproton and a positron - is trickier still because it must not come into contact with anything else.
While trapping of charged normal atoms can be done with electric or magnetic fields, trapping antihydrogen atoms in this "hands-off" way requires a very particular type of field.
"Atoms are neutral - they have no net charge - but they have a little magnetic character," explained Jeff Hangst of Aarhus University in Denmark, one of the collaborators on the Alpha antihydrogen trapping project.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
it raises an interesting question about magnetic fields .... what are they, exactly, that they can interact with both matter and anti-matter without destroying it?
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dang. good question. now I’m not gonna be able to sleep tonight. ;-)
Hopefully, one of our FR experts weighs in for some direction on that one.
Usually though high-speed collisions between particles. Then the particles have to be slowed down enough relative to one another so that the positron can start orbiting the anti-proton.
I think your refering to Doesntmatter
Photo of the electrodes (gold) for the ALPHA Penning trap being inserted into the vacuum chamber and cryostat assembly. Scientists at CERN said they had trapped dozens of hydrogen "antimatter" atoms, a technical feat that boosts research into one of the great puzzles of particle physics. (ALPHA/Swansea/Niels Madsen)
A technician walks under the core magnet of the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN in the French village of Cessy, in a file photo. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse.
No big deal. I’ve been collecting tons of Doesn’t-Matter since I was 12...
Nice piece of work...Now we need to assign them to the “illegal alien” invasion...
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