Welcome! These forums will be deactivated by the end of this year. The conversation continues in a new morph over on Discord! Please join us there for a more active conversation and the occasional opportunity to ask developers questions directly! Go to the PS+ Discord Server.

First antihydrogen

12 posts / 0 new
Last post
Thu, 2010-11-18 10:28
#1
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
First antihydrogen
38 atoms of antihydrogen have been made and trapped: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101117/full/468355a.html Now things just need to be scaled up a lot of orders of magnitude.
—
Extropian
Top
Thu, 2010-11-18 11:40
root root's picture
Re: First antihydrogen
root@First antihydrogen [hr] I love CERN. Now they need to figure out how to contain it indefinitely, with a somewhat lower energy input.
—
[ @-rep +1 | c-rep +1 | g-rep +1 | r-rep +1 ]
Top
Thu, 2010-11-18 23:09
Rhyx Rhyx's picture
Re: First antihydrogen
Anyone else smell a Manhattan project 2 coming to a pentagon near you?
—

[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/A_Rep.jpg[/img] 2 [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/R_Rep.jpg[/img] 7 [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/C_Rep.jpg[/img] 2
[img]http://i.imgur.com/qtBZ9.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/AT25J.jpg[/img]

Top
Fri, 2010-11-19 00:08
root root's picture
Re: First antihydrogen
root@First antihydrogen [hr] The project to use it for power generation is much easier and more cost effective. Stability of that stuff in weapon form is a mindbogglingly difficult problem. My mind is boggled at the thought.
—
[ @-rep +1 | c-rep +1 | g-rep +1 | r-rep +1 ]
Top
Fri, 2010-11-19 07:16
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: First antihydrogen
root wrote:
The project to use it for power generation is much easier and more cost effective.
Ahem. Making those 38 atoms took a particle accelerator that consumes more power than many towns. As inefficient power production goes, antimatter is simply amazingly bad. As power storage on the other hand, it is equally amazingly good. If you can stabilize it. And if you want really hot gammas.
—
Extropian
Top
Fri, 2010-11-19 09:40
root root's picture
Re: First antihydrogen
root@First antihydrogen [hr] The project to use it for power storage is much easier and more cost effective. However, it is still mindbogglingly complex, and my mind boggles at the problems. I should further caviat my knowledge and say that I haven't believed we would actually ever get antimatter in my lifetime, so I don't have much familiarity with it. I just know that in general, it is a giant bitch to weaponize unstable energy sources. You end up with houses full of popcorn, and Val Kilmer making snarky comments as he shows the stuffy academics that creativity can't be boxed, man.
—
[ @-rep +1 | c-rep +1 | g-rep +1 | r-rep +1 ]
Top
Fri, 2010-11-19 13:12
Rhyx Rhyx's picture
Re: First antihydrogen
Yeah but doesn't an antimatter explosion, other that the initial kablooey, leave not much (as in tolerable) amounts of radiation around? Just that scenario should be making DARPA do the butt wiggle dance in anticipation of the possibilities. I mean it takes I dunno how many man hours to create a carrier group with supply ships in tow destroyers ect. So who cares if it takes the power of several small towns to make stabilized antimatter if you can end up with a weapon that can turn all of those ships to slag AND not have the international community gripe at you because you've just irradiated a chunk of ocean. I could conceivably see with the right spin Washington patting itself on the back because they are remaking their arsenal into something more "eco-friendly" than a good old messy hydrogen bomb.
—

[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/A_Rep.jpg[/img] 2 [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/R_Rep.jpg[/img] 7 [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/C_Rep.jpg[/img] 2
[img]http://i.imgur.com/qtBZ9.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/AT25J.jpg[/img]

Top
Fri, 2010-11-19 16:22
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: First antihydrogen
Rhyx wrote:
Yeah but doesn't an antimatter explosion, other that the initial kablooey, leave not much (as in tolerable) amounts of radiation around?
No. Sure, all the antimatter will turn into energy. But in the meantime, you get broken atomic nuclei accelerated to high velocities slamming into other nuclei, as well as plenty of energetic muons, pions and gammas that can destabilize nuclei. I think the fallout will be a bit less than for a hydrogen bomb, but still very noticeable.
Quote:
I mean it takes I dunno how many man hours to create a carrier group with supply ships in tow destroyers ect. So who cares if it takes the power of several small towns to make stabilized antimatter if you can end up with a weapon that can turn all of those ships to slag AND not have the international community gripe at you because you've just irradiated a chunk of ocean. I could conceivably see with the right spin Washington patting itself on the back because they are remaking their arsenal into something more "eco-friendly" than a good old messy hydrogen bomb.
The military are big on cost-effectiveness. An antimatter-nuke requires as much energy as a few *countries* produce (current methods require 1.16 x 10^21 J/g, according to http://www.engr.psu.edu/antimatter/Papers/NASA_anti.pdf and would give you less than a kt explosion. This is 11 times the current yearly US energy production). How many ordinary nukes and spin doctors could you get for that level of effort? Antimatter weapons make sense when you have absurd amounts of cheap energy to distil, like on Mercury.
—
Extropian
Top
Sat, 2010-11-20 17:34
Rhyx Rhyx's picture
Re: First antihydrogen
Sounds like an open and shut case then! So until we get some more energy I guess antimatter harvesting is going to be mostly for experimental purposes.
—

[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/A_Rep.jpg[/img] 2 [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/R_Rep.jpg[/img] 7 [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/C_Rep.jpg[/img] 2
[img]http://i.imgur.com/qtBZ9.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/AT25J.jpg[/img]

Top
Sat, 2010-11-20 19:17
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: First antihydrogen
Still, I know a neutrino physicist who is concerned for offensive military applications of his research. I find it unlikely, but maybe he knows something I don't... (In EP, I wonder if you could overload neutrino sensors with high amplitude neutrino radiation - you can't jam the transmissions, but you can jam the receiver)
—
Extropian
Top
Sat, 2010-12-11 21:04
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: First antihydrogen
Arenamontanus wrote:
Ahem. Making those 38 atoms took a particle accelerator that consumes more power than many towns. As inefficient power production goes, antimatter is simply amazingly bad. As power storage on the other hand, it is equally amazingly good. If you can stabilize it. And if you want really hot gammas.
To be fair, we may find more efficient ways to produce antimatter in the future, especially since antimatter research is still largely in its infancy.
—
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
Top
Tue, 2011-06-07 01:52
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: First antihydrogen
And now, 8 months later the antihydrogen lasts for 1000 seconds. http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26709/ http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nphys2025.html Original paper here: http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nphys2025.pdf (if nothing else, GMs take note of the methods section near the end: it is crammed with good terminology to use for technobabble for the power engineers. "Sir! We are getting a radiative cascade! We must do a vertex reconstruction fast or she is going to blow!")
—
Extropian
Top