Antimatter Particles

[EvoN1020v]

Originally Posted by EvoN1020v

Regardless, I found this interesting information on antimatter particles:

 

The world's largest scientific research facility --- Switzerland's Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire (CERN) -- recently succeeded in producing the first particles of antimatter. Antimatter is identical to physical matter except that it is composed of particles whose electric charges are opposite to those found in normal matter.

 

Antimatter is the most powerful energy source known to man. It releases energy with 100 percent efficiency (nuclear fission is 1.5 percent efficient). Antimatter creates no pollution or radiation, and a droplet could power New York City for a full day.

 

There is, however, one catch...

 

Antimatter is highly unstable. It ignites when it comes in contact with absolutely anything... even air. A single gram of antimatter contains the energy of a 20-kiloton nuclear bomb --- the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

 

Until recently antimatter has been created only in very small amounts (a few atoms at a time). But CERN has now broken ground in its new Antiproton Decelerator --- an advanced antimatter production facility that promises to create antimatter in much larger quantities.

 

One question looms: Will this highly volatile substance save the world, or will it be used to create the most deadly weapon ever made?

 

[stored from Angels & Demons by Dan Brown]

 

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I wont comment on that post, since this is supposed to be a thread about black holes. I'll point out the things wrong with this article if you make a thread about it. Quoted by [Tycho?].

 

 

 

Ok, I have made a new thread only for antimatter particles. What is wrong with the article?

[Daecon]

(My underlining.)

The world's largest scientific research facility --- Switzerland's Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire (CERN) -- recently succeeded in producing the first particles of antimatter. Antimatter is identical to physical matter except that it is composed of particles whose electric charges are opposite to those found in normal matter.

 

...

 

Antimatter is the most powerful energy source known to man. It releases energy with 100 percent efficiency (nuclear fission is 1.5 percent efficient). Antimatter creates no pollution or radiation' date=' and a droplet could power New York City for a full day. [/quote']

What about electrically neutral particles? ;-)

 

Now I don't know for sure, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't there be some pretty strong radiation from matter/antimatter? Gamma rays, X-rays and UV radiation and so on?

[m4rc]

One question looms: Will this highly volatile substance save the world' date=' or will it be used to create the most deadly weapon ever made?

[/quote']

 

It is unlikely that antimatter will save the world from its energy crisis. The reason for this is that it is impossible to make energy (law of conservation of energy). We can only transform energy from one form to another. It will take a lot of energy to make a significant amount of antimatter. So even if the guys at CERN have a 100% efficient method of extracting this energy from the antimatter, if they find a 100% efficient method of producing antimatter, then they will only get out of it the same amount of energy that they put into antimatter.

 

However as you mentioned, it has the possibilities of making a tiny but extreamly powerfull bomb. The emission from antimatter/matter annihilation is mostly gamma rays. This can be converted to heat by having matter absorb the gamma rays.

[Daecon]

"It will take a lot of energy to make a significant amount of antimatter."

 

It should take less energy if you already have access to the constituent components of antimatter, such as positrons and the correct combination of quarks...

 

It's not like you're trying to change pure energy into (anti)matter.

[swansont]

"It will take a lot of energy to make a significant amount of antimatter."

 

It should take less energy if you already have access to the constituent components of antimatter' date=' such as positrons and the correct combination of quarks...

 

It's not like you're trying to change pure energy into (anti)matter.[/quote']

 

Actually that's exactly what you are doing. You create matter and anitmatter from energy, at least for the nuclear components. You culd have a source of positrons, but that's a small fraction of the energy involved.

[Klaynos]

My issue with antimatter creation is how we're going to store it.

 

On a related note, I started an experiment today investigating positron and electron anihilation. We use a Sodium 22 source which decays to create a positron that anihilates with a positron. This creates 2 photons of energy 0.51MeV which is a tiny amount, and very difficult to capture in a way that would be usefull for powering anything...

[[Tycho?]]

Originally Posted by EvoN1020v

Regardless' date=' I found this interesting information on antimatter particles:

 

The world's largest scientific research facility --- Switzerland's Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire (CERN) -- recently succeeded in producing the first particles of antimatter. Antimatter is identical to physical matter except that it is composed of particles whose electric charges are opposite to those found in normal matter.

 

Antimatter is the most powerful energy source known to man. It releases energy with 100 percent efficiency (nuclear fission is 1.5 percent efficient). Antimatter creates no pollution or radiation, and a droplet could power New York City for a full day.

 

There is, however, one catch...

 

Antimatter is highly unstable. It ignites when it comes in contact with absolutely anything... even air. A single gram of antimatter contains the energy of a 20-kiloton nuclear bomb --- the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

 

Until recently antimatter has been created only in very small amounts (a few atoms at a time). But CERN has now broken ground in its new Antiproton Decelerator --- an advanced antimatter production facility that promises to create antimatter in much larger quantities.

 

One question looms: Will this highly volatile substance save the world, or will it be used to create the most deadly weapon ever made?

 

[stored from Angels & Demons by Dan Brown']

 

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I wont comment on that post, since this is supposed to be a thread about black holes. I'll point out the things wrong with this article if you make a thread about it. Quoted by [Tycho?].

 

 

 

Ok, I have made a new thread only for antimatter particles. What is wrong with the article?

 

Well creation of antimatter isn't exactly recent. It is created natrually from certain types of radioactive decay. Even if they were talking about actual atoms of anti-matter thats still something that was done several years ago.

 

Anti-matter is not created atoms at a time for the most part. Most anitmatter is just positrons, since they are the easiest to get. Next would be anti-protons I would guess. Making them into actual atoms is very difficult and inneficient, so when someone says "antimatter" they virtually never mean atoms of antimatter.

 

And I doubt antimatter will be saving or dooming the world anytime soon. The huge difficulties and inneficiencies in creating it make it nonsense for a source of energy (since it isn't a source of energy, at best its just a horrible way of storing energy). And it would make a hugely expensive weapon, even though we have nukes that can do the job anyway for a tiny fraction of the price.

[EvoN1020v]

Hope this article can pose some lights on the topic we are discussing about:

 

The Antiproton Decelerator is a very special machine compared to what already exists at CERN and other laboratories around the world. So far, an "antiparticle factory" consisted of a chain of several accelerators, each one performing one of the steps needed to produce antiparticles. The CERN antiproton complex is a very good example of this.

 

At the end of the 70's CERN built an antiproton source called the Antiproton Accumulator (AA). Its task was to produce and accumulate high energy antiprotons to feed into the SPS in order to transform it into a "proton-antiproton collider".

 

As soon as antiprotons became available, physicists realized how much could be learned by using them at low energy, so CERN decided to build a new machine: LEAR, the Low Energy Antiproton Ring. Antiprotons accumulated in the AA were extracted, decelerated in the PS and then injected into LEAR for further deceleration. In 1986 a second ring, the Antiproton Collector (AC), was built around the existing AA in order to improve the antiproton production rate by a factor of 10.

 

The AC is now being transformed into the AD, which will perform all the tasks that the AC, AA, PS and LEAR used to do with antiprotons, i.e. produce, collect, cool, decelerate and eventually extract them to the experiments.

 

 

There's some images of the machine here:

http://livefromcern.web.cern.ch/livefromcern/antimatter/factory/AM-factory01.html

[swansont]

The energy to do this far outweighs the mass-energy of the created articles. And though the note about the energy of 1 gram of antimatter is roughly correct (my quick calculation differs by an order of magnitude) what hasn't been addressed is how much antimatter gets/can be stored in the CERN device. Many orders of magnitude short of a gram is my guess.

[5614]

http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Content/Chapters/Spotlight/SpotlightAandD-en.html

CERN's comments on all the scientific points raised in Angels & Demons.

 

swansont: the reason your calculations might be out is because you need 1g of matter to annihilate to create that energy. That is 0.5g of matter and 0.5g antimatter and NOT 1g antimatter as suggested - full calculations on the link above.

 

As for storing antiparticles:

You can't store it because it cannot come into contact with anything. So you could use magnetic fields to store it, but no magnetic field is strong enough to store enough of it to be used for annything useful.

 

Furthermore you could not create enough of it at once to do anything useful with it. With the rate that CERN is currently producing antimatter it would take two billion years to create 1g (see the link for that maths).

 

Efficiency:

Whilst antimatter is 100% efficient when it annihilates the problem with making it is that you put energy into making them and then some of the antimatter particles will escape or annihilate before you can capture them for use. In that respect it is not 100% efficient, however theoretically it is. Again see the link for more.

[swansont]

swansont: the reason your calculations might be out is because you need 1g of matter to annihilate to create that energy. That is 0.5g of matter and 0.5g antimatter and NOT 1g antimatter as suggested - full calculations on the link above.

 

That's only a factor of two. I figured out my error - I dropped a decimal place.

 

The important point is the eight or nine orders of magnitude difference in the amounts needed vs amounts that can be produced and stored.

[Sashatheman]

What exactly does it mean the anti-particle Decays. What does it decay into? Doesnt it need its twin normal particle to turn back into pure energy?

[5614]

What are you talking about or referring to?

 

For an antiparticle to decay it needs to come into contact with its corresponding particle and then they annihilate. Unless it meant "decay" in a different context.

[Sashatheman]

What are you talking about or referring to?

 

For an antiparticle to decay it needs to come into contact with its corresponding particle and then they annihilate. Unless it meant "decay" in a different context.

 

Are you talking about my post?

 

So your saying the two particles quickly come together and turn back into energy. Thats the meaning of decay.

 

So wheres all the antimatter thats ment to exist for all the matter we see in day to day lvies. Even ourselves.

[[Tycho?]]

Are you talking about my post?

 

So your saying the two particles quickly come together and turn back into energy. Thats the meaning of decay.

 

So wheres all the antimatter thats ment to exist for all the matter we see in day to day lvies. Even ourselves.

 

I'm not sure what you're talking about, but I think you're quite confused about the subject. Antimatter that's meant to exist? What does this mean?

[m4rc]

So wheres all the antimatter thats ment to exist for all the matter we see in day to day lvies. Even ourselves.

 

You have noticed a major problem in modern cosmology.

 

The universe is believed to contain a lot more matter than antimatter.

 

As far as we know, there is no way to make matter without making an equal amount of anti-matter. Also as far as we know, there is no way to destroy antimatter without destroying an equal amount of matter.

 

The main way to look for antimatter in the universe is to look for the gamma rays produced during antimatter/matter annihilation. There are no strong gamma ray sources consistent with matter/antimatter annihilation.

 

Although one hypothesis is that the matter and antimatter would be separated. This is not believed to be the case (not certain of the justification for this).

 

Therefore scientists are searching for differences between matter and antimatter to explain the excess amount of matter in the universe. They have found some small differences but so far there has been no adequate explanation. See for example http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000E7C2A-A53B-1C75-9B81809EC588EF21 .

[Daecon]

How can we be sure that all the antimatter and matter that was able to come into direct contact with each other hasn't already reacted into energy, a few billion years ago - leaving "pockets" or matter or anitmatter in it's own, isolated by distance, areas of the Universe?

 

Or is the level of backgound radiation not compatible with the amounts of energy that would have been produced, if that were the case?

[5614]

Are you talking about my post?

 

So your saying the two particles quickly come together and turn back into energy. Thats the meaning of decay.

 

So wheres all the antimatter thats ment to exist for all the matter we see in day to day lvies. Even ourselves.

I was referring to your post' date=' I should have quoted, appologies for any confusion.

 

When the subject is antimatter and someone says something about antimatter decaying they are usually referring to the matter-antimatter annihilation, that is, when (for example) an electron meets a positron (a positron is an anti-electron) they will annihilate, I would have thought that was what was meant by decay.

 

Ah, I just searched the thread for the word "decay" and found it in a few places. They were referring to radioactive decay. For example Klaynos said that his Sodium-22 source decayed. He means that his sodium-22 underwent radioactive decay (in this case beta plus decay) which basically means that a positron was released.

 

[Tycho?'] was also referring to radioactive decays such as beta plus decay in which a positron (an anti-electron, ie. an antiparticle) is released.

 

Beta plus decay: In more detail what actually happens is that a proton changes to a neutron and in the process releases a positron and a neutrino.

 

m4rc answered the "where is all the antimatter" question quite well.

[swansont]

As far as we know' date=' there is no way to make matter without making an equal amount of anti-matter. Also as far as we know, there is no way to destroy antimatter without destroying an equal amount of matter.

[/quote']

 

This is contradicted by your link. The problem isn't that there is no mechanism, it's that the observed mechanism isn't strong enough to account for all the matter. (I don't know if it's possible that CP is violated more strongly at higher energies.)

[EvoN1020v]

http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Content/Chapters/Spotlight/SpotlightAandD-en.html

CERN's comments on all the scientific points raised in Angels & Demons.

 

swansont: the reason your calculations might be out is because you need 1g of matter to annihilate to create that energy. That is 0.5g of matter and 0.5g antimatter and NOT 1g antimatter as suggested - full calculations on the link above.

 

As for storing antiparticles:

You can't store it because it cannot come into contact with anything. So you could use magnetic fields to store it' date=' but no magnetic field is strong enough to store enough of it to be used for annything useful.

 

Furthermore you could not create enough of it at once to do anything useful with it. With the rate that CERN is currently producing antimatter it would take two billion years to create 1g (see the link for that maths).

 

[u']Efficiency:[/u]

Whilst antimatter is 100% efficient when it annihilates the problem with making it is that you put energy into making them and then some of the antimatter particles will escape or annihilate before you can capture them for use. In that respect it is not 100% efficient, however theoretically it is. Again see the link for more.

 

http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Content/Chapters/Spotlight/SpotlightAandD-en.html

This is a really good link. It will answer most of your questions on the antimatter. Scroll way down and you'll find it.

[Sashatheman]

Thanks Evon for the link. Good read

 

 

Somethign iteresting i read on that link, was the question i aksed before, why theres more matter then anti matter in the universe.

 

The extreme tempretures of the big bang might have allowed that to happen.

[5614]

why theres more matter then anti matter in the universe.

 

The extreme tempretures of the big bang might have allowed that to happen.

This is a posibility, there is no definite answer to your question and there is ongoing research into the answer. What you say is one of multiple possible theories.

[s pepperchin]

Maybe there is more anti-matter than matter but we have chosen to call anti-matter: matter and vice-versa.

[Sashatheman]

Maybe there is more anti-matter than matter but we have chosen to call anti-matter: matter and vice-versa.

 

doesnt matter what we call it, the fact is, theres more of one then the other.

[s pepperchin]

and if there wasn't than nothing would exist.