Antimatter

[Powerman 5000]

All im asking is do they make it? Do the scientist know if in a freefall if its up or down? And if they can make it at all? Im young so explain things slowly HHAAHHAA :P

[Josh]

The answer is ... Yes. Antimatter is made in particle accelerators like the one found at CERN (http://public.web.cern.ch/public/) or Fermi Lab (http://www.fnal.gov/). Also, they can be found in nature in cosmic rays (I believe). In particle accelerators, charged particles are accelerated (surprisingly enough) to near the speed of light and crashed into a target. Obviously very high energies are involved and upon collision the particles break apart into their constituent parts ... so the structure of matter can be studied. These subatomic particles include groups called Fermions, Bosons and Hadrons. It's the Fermions where the antimatter can be found. Fermions can be either matter or antimater. The matter consists of leptons and quarks and the anti matter is made up of .. well.. anti-leptons and anti-quarks. The leptons and quarks can be broken down even further. An electron is an example of a lepton. The anti-lepton form of this is the positron (this has similar mass to an electron but the opposite charge). All fermion subatomic particles have an associated anti-particle. As with the electron/positron, all these anti-particles have pretty much the same mass but opposite charge as their corresponding particle.

And in regard to the falling up issue. i'm pretty sure that antiparticles still react "normally" to gravity. these particles however, in experiments, exist for such short periods of time I doubt that their reaction to natural conditions would be studied. Extremely strong electro-magnets are used to try and hold them in place while they are briefly in existence so that they can be observed.

Hope that helps.

Josh

[Faulkner]

I'm very curious about just how much antimatter has been manufactured at these laboratories? Surely they wouldn't keep it altogether in one "magnetic bottle"??? ... keeping in mind that a matter-antimatter explosion could wipe out a whole continent, not just a city!!!?

[Graceless]

CERN, in August 2002, began working on the creation of antihydrogen atoms in order to begin the process of testing theories that antimatter would behave quite similar to matter. In a project called Athena, over 50,000 antihydrogen atoms had been created in a little over a month.
I am also aware that antimatter has a very short "shelf life", rendering storage all but useless. About 3 years ago, the two labs had only managed to create a dozen or so between them, all short-lived.
Also, antimatter requires a very large amount of energy to create, something like ten billion more times. CERN creates enough short-lived antimatter in a year to power a lightbulb for about 10-15 minutes.
You aren't in any danger of an antimatter explosion.

[Josh]

In addition ...

Matter-antimatter annihilation isn't the same as a matter-antimatter explosion. When matter and antimatter subatomic particle interact they annihilate each other on contact. In order to have a matter-antimatter explosion (like an antimatter bomb for eg) the amount of antimatter created would have to large and the scale on which it operated would also have to be large. Subatomic particles wouldn't cut it unless they were in the form of a plasma or gas - ie a big structure (relative to the subatomic particle size). You're not in any danger of CERN blowing up Earth because or a stray anti-particle.

[Graceless]

Yeah. And that.

Antimatter is a very interesting topic in that most of the theories are unproven due to limits of technology. I wonder if Stephen Hawking has a bet on this one too....

[Faulkner]

Thanks guys! I'm breathing a lot easier! (But wouldn't that scenario make a great movie???!)

I just wanna throw this one in...because it's been bugging me....maybe someone knows something about this? -

I remember seeing an anomalous & ambiguous little article in the newspaper a few years back ('98? '99? or so). It mentioned an experiment being performed in a lab in New York where scientists were fooling with something called "strangelets". The article said something to the effect that the scientists were relieved that the experiment went successfully, because it could've destroyed the whole planet!!!?

Ha, no no I'm not pulling your legs. That's what the article said. Now, I don't trust everything I read in newspapers...and I can't find much at all about "strangelets" on the 'net (let alone this bizarre experiment)...but I'm wondering if anybody knows anything at all of this experiment?? Or was it just some fictitious newspaper "filler" that I read? (We all know about "filler" articles, don't we?)... ;)

[Powerman 5000]

I'm still in high school so i can't remember hearing much about that in middle school my mind was on something else ... i can say my teacher told me most antimatter is created accidently through creating sub atomic particles is he right


P.S. Strangelets are my next venture after i discover more about the singularity and the so called white holes it might be a while though... :D

[Faulkner]

Yes, Powerman 5000, antimatter particles are a routine by-product of many subatomic collisions in particle accelerators experiments.

Strangelets... Uh, well since I last looked there seems to be lots of information on these little buggers now. The lab, I found, was Brookhaven, in New York. The worst-case scenario of a runaway chain-reaction engulfing the earth has since been put to rest, apparently. We're safe...(for now)...

[DippyHippy]

So what *is* the worst-case scenario at the moment?

[QJones]

Probably loss of funding ...

I have an on-line link to an audio article about antimatter. I'd suggest listening to it, since it's pretty basic.

(the rest of the site is pretty good, too)

Antimatter Matters (http://radio.cbc.ca/programs/quirks/archives/02-03/mp3/qq021102d.mp3)

From this site. (http://radio.cbc.ca/programs/quirks/index.html) By the way, this is on a Canadian Radio Station once a week. I like to frequent it, so that it keeps its funding ... this way, normal people listening to AM can be excited about new science news.

[Powerman 5000]

Thanx all of you for this information by the way antimatter was part of the (theorized) big bang so why does matter appear to be the to be more common than antimatter? Is it because antimatter was in smaller quantity than matter? :blink:

[Josh]

Pretty much. Almost equal amounts of matter and antimatter were supposedly created at the instant of the big bang and almost immediately they annihilated each other. There was, however, an excess of matter that (at least what we call matter. it might actually be antimatter i guess but in any case it) survived the first instances of the post big bang universe.

[Faulkner]

I think physicists are still scratching their heads over this one. How could there be an excess of "matter" when the experiments & equations show EQUAL amounts of matter & antimatter are produced from energy conversion? Maybe all the antimatter is hidden away somewhere...in our future perhaps...?

[Powerman 5000]

Antimatter is as mysterious as strangelets let alone the universe it self. Anyone know about the string theory my teacher couldn't explain it to me in terms that i could understand.