Antimatter Science Fiction becomes Science Fact

[Kyle Perkins 0]

In case you think antimatter only exists in Star Trek, here's some information I found out about how factual it really is. This information comes from the Swiss research group called CERN."In 1995 a team of German and Italian physicists (experiment PS210) succeeded for the first time in building up nine atoms of "antihydrogen": while in normal hydrogen an electron orbitates around a proton, in such antiatoms a positron was made to orbit around an antiproton. The result was confirmed, by the end of 1996, by a team at Fermilab. Experiment E862, using antiprotons extracted directly from the Tevatron Antiproton Accumulator, detected several antihydrogen atoms."Supposedly, a drop of antimatter would power New York City for a week, with no radiation or side effects. The only problem: if antimatter touches matter, even air, it reacts violently and explodes, literally vaporizing all matter within a certain blast radius. Therefore, it must be kept in a magnetically charged vacuum, so that the antimatter particle remains "floating." What do you think about this controversial achievement?-Kyle

[Xevian 0]

My tution teacher told me about this once... If I'm correct, they also created another antimatter, although it can power New York for a week, it takes almost as much energy to FORM the antimatter... Let me see if I can find the other antimatter on the internet!
Some amazing insight on what might happen to us in the future!

Antimatter sounds like the stuff of science fiction, and it is. But it's also very real. Antimatter is created and annihilated in stars every day. Here on Earth it's harnessed for medical brain scans.
"Antimatter is around us each day, although there isn't very much of it," says Gerald Share of the Naval Research Laboratory. "It is not something that can be found by itself in a jar on a table."

So Share went looking for evidence of some in the Sun, a veritable antimatter factory, leading to new results that provide limited fresh insight into these still-mysterious particles.

Simply put, antimatter is a fundamental particle of regular matter with its electrical charge reversed. The common proton has an antimatter counterpart called the antiproton. It has the same mass but an opposite charge. The electron's counterpart is called a positron.

Antimatter particles are created in ultra high-speed collisions. 

Researchers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center developed this sketch of a hypothetical antimatter rocket of the future.

One example is when a high-energy proton in a solar flare collides with carbon, Share explained in an e-mail interview. "It can form a type of nitrogen that has too many protons relative to its number of neutrons." This makes its nucleus unstable, and a positron is emitted to stabilize the situation.

But positrons don't last long. When they hit an electron, they annihilate and produce energy.

"So the cycle is complete, and for this reason there is so little antimatter around at a given time," Share said.

The antimatter wars

To better understand the elusive nature of antimatter, we must back up to the beginning of time.

In the first seconds after the Big Bang, there was no matter, scientists suspect. Just energy. As the universe expanded and cooled, particles of regular matter and antimatter were formed in almost equal amounts.

But, theory holds, a slightly higher percentage of regular matter developed -- perhaps just one part in a million -- for unknown reasons. That was all the edge needed for regular matter to win the longest running war in the cosmos.

"When the matter and antimatter came into contact they annihilated, and only the residual amount of matter was left to form our current universe," Share says.

Antimatter was first theorized based on work done in 1928 by the physicist Paul Dirac. The positron was discovered in 1932. Science fiction writers latched onto the concept and wrote of antiworlds and antiuniverses.

Potential power

Antimatter has tremendous energy potential, if it could ever be harnessed. A solar flare in July 2002 created about a pound of antimatter, or half a kilo, according to new NASA-led research. That's enough to power the United States for two days.

Laboratory particle accelerators can produce high-energy antimatter particles, too, but only in tiny quantities. Something on the order of a billionth of a gram or less is produced every year.


Nonetheless, sci-fi writers long ago devised schemes using antimatter to power space travelers beyond light-speed. Antimatter didnât get a bad name, but it sunk into the collective consciousness as a purely fictional concept. Given some remarkable physics breakthrough, antimatter could in theory power a spacecraft. But NASA researchers say it's nothing that will happen in the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, antimatter has proved vitally useful for medical purposes. The fleeting particles of antimatter are also created by the decay of radioactive material, which can be injected into a patient in order to perform Positron Emission Tomography, or PET scan of the brain. Here's what happens:

A positron that's produced by decay almost immediately finds an electron and annihilates into two gamma rays, Share explains. These gamma rays move in opposite directions, and by recording several of their origin points an image is produced.

Looking at the Sun

In the Sun, flares of matter accelerate already fast-moving particles, which collide with slower particles in the Sun's atmosphere, producing antimatter. Scientists had expected these collisions to happen in relatively dense regions of the solar atmosphere. If that were the case, the density would cause the antimatter to annihilate almost immediately.

Share's team examined gamma rays emitted by antimatter annihilation, as observed by NASA's RHESSI spacecraft in work led by Robert Lin of the University of California, Berkeley.

The research suggests the antimatter perhaps shuffles around, being created in one spot and destroyed in another, contrary to what scientists expect for the ephemeral particles. But the results are unclear. They could also mean antimatter is created in regions where extremely high temperatures make the particle density 1,000 times lower than what scientists expected was conducive to the process.

Details of the work will be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters on Oct. 1.

Unknowns remain

Though scientists like to see antimatter as a natural thing, much about it remains highly mysterious. Even some of the fictional portrayals of mirror-image objects have not been proven totally out of this world.

"We cannot rule out the possibility that some antimatter star or galaxy exists somewhere," Share says. "Generally it would look the same as a matter star or galaxy to most of our instruments."

Theory argues that antimatter would behave identical to regular matter gravitationally.

"However, there must be some boundary where antimatter atoms from the antimatter galaxies or stars will come into contact with normal atoms," Share notes. "When that happens a large amount of energy in the form of gamma rays would be produced. To date we have not detected these gamma rays even though there have been very sensitive instruments in space to observe them."

[Kyle Perkins 0]

That's a lot of info! I didn't know that the sun is constantly producing antimatter. I also didn't realize that it would take as much energy to produce antimatter as it would produce itself. I guess until technology becomes more advanced, antimatter will just remain something to study. Still, the prospect of antimatter is pretty great: high-yield producer of energy with no radiation or toxic waste seems almost too good to be true!-Kyle

[firedoor 0]

i think one of the advantages is that if you needed power i.e a nuclear submarine for a long time without the enviromental risks this would be useful. It may take the same amount of energy to produce the anti-matter but the transports potential makes up for this. As for part about the reaction, it's more than likley the military are highly interested in this.

[Xevian 0]

Its quite dangerous though as mentioned in my above post, what if this anti-matter got loose? Then the submarine would go kaboom then it sinks, same goes with the air force, if there was a air to air combat, then one of them fired a missle and lets just say it managed to blow the other plane up, then the antimatter would leak out, causing more damage and in the end both sides get vapourised... Would rather not try this out...

[szupie 0]

Hmm, interesting. I didn't know anti-matter made matter explode, I just thought it cancels them out.Does anyone know why anti-matter can produce energy? Is it better than matter? What if our whole world was made of anti-matter? Would anti-matter then be called matter, and matter vice versa? Uh... I seem to be getting off topic talking about philosophy here...

[Kyle Perkins 0]

That's an interesting idea. What if there are whole dimentions or something made entirely of antimatter? Where they think that what we know of as matter is antimatter, and if our dimentions were to ever meet, everything would vaporize!-Kyle

[Xevian 0]

That's an interesting idea.  What if there are whole dimentions or something made entirely of antimatter?  Where they think that what we know of as matter is antimatter, and if our dimentions were to ever meet, everything would vaporize!

 

-Kyle

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Whole dimensions made out of antimatter colliding into matter will be quite catasrophic... It will cause something in the proportions of a nuclear bombardment... About 100,000,000,000 times worse though... I'm not quite sure whether it implodes or explodes... The more logical answer would be that it explodes as imploding will cause a miniture blackhole if my theory is not wrong...

[szupie 0]

I think that a whole Universe (heh, dimension's not the same as Universe...) made of anti-matter would be almost the same as a whole Univers of matter. If everything is anti, the life forms there would think of everything as not anti, but instead think of our Universe as as anti Universe. If our Universes collide, It'd be horrible... Possibly creating a new giant Universe that would be started by a Huge Bang...

[Xevian 0]

Correct! Only that if its the universe that is different, we would be able to feel the effects as the outer edges of space in our universe eat at each others universe. Maybe there is a way to prevent this from happening? We can never know!

[qwijibow 0]

Antimatter... Scientist have known about it for decades.
Has anyone here studdied Physics at College Level (A-Level) in england ???

if you have, you will have done all sorts of anti-matter equations.

A typical Exam Question is....

An Anti Proton Traveling at 2KeV collides with a Proton Traveling at 0.5KeV.What is the Frequency of the Photons Generated by the Anti-matter Anialation reaction

this is a cliche' but its True... Mass and Energy are the same thing.

How to make a Photon (a lump of light) simply allow an anti matter particle to collide with matter. 2 photons are generated.

Have you heard of "Conservation of Charge" ???
Light has NO charge, its not positive or negative, no energy has charge.

but matter does have charge, Protons and Posetrons (antimatter electrons) are positive
Electrons and anti-protons are negative.

Anti Protons are simple proton made of different Quarks (a quark is the smallest Known particle, possably indisisable (we used to think that protons were in-devisable, they are not))

so when a proton and anti-proton come together, their charge cancels each other out, and they are neutral (same as energy ans do become light)

so anti matter is chemically identile to matter, only it has an opposite charge.

20 anti protons + 20 protons = 40 photons (light)

Here is Why anti-matter energy would ROCK !

chemical energy, for example burning Coal is very weak.
Neuclear energy such as fission and dusion is very stong.

this is because an Attom of Uranium is actually HEAVIER than the sum of all its components.
so when you split Uranium, you are converting a small % or matter to energy. (i think its like 0.1%.

HOWEVER.. when you Mix matter and anti Matter, 100% of the matter is converted to energy !!!! (thousands perhaps millions of times more powerfull than a nuclear bomb !!!!!!!!!)

Its verry hard to make Uranium explode... its relatiivly safe...
but with antyi matter, if the confinement fails, your looking at conditions MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH hotter than the center of the sun.


Now.... here is a question that will hurt your Brain....
Conservation of Charge DEMANDS that for every piece of Matter in the universe, there is an equal piece of Anti-matter.,..

our whole solar system is pretty much pure matter.

their could be other other systems out there with aliens made of anyi-Matter.

If a few milli litres of matter and snti-matter mixed, and could case a equielant neuclear bomb explosion... what would happen if somehow a commet or asteroid of anti-matter the like the one that killed the dinousors (but made of anti-matter) somehow found its way to outr solar system ???

[Kyle Perkins 0]

That's a scary thought, that there's amounts of antimatter out there equal to matter. I doubt that an antimatter comet would find it's way in to our own Sol system, odds are that it would find something else to collide into on it's way. But, I guess there is a slim chance it could just miss everything else and impact against us. Even if an antimatter comet hit, say, Pluto, the following blast would be enough to knock a few planets out of orbit, at least.-Kyle

[Compuccino 0]

This is in the Guiness World Records for the most explosive product or the product that is hardest to generate!Anyway, this is a remarkable achievement and I hope more will be done!Compuccino

[CaptainRon 0]

well about our world being made up of anti-matter, isnt that just perspective? what is normal for us is matter and what was needed to be generated artificially is anti-matter. it simply doesn't matter if we say it the other way round. doesn't change the scientific concepts.even the concept of quarks and anti-quarks is similar. its said that our universe was formed by the collision of two such particle gasses. what was left out of the collision is our present universe. i doubt. i believe an equivalent universe must have been formed out of antiquarks, because to start with, we must have had equivalent amount of quarks and anti-quarks.

[mitchellmckain 0]

In the Sun, flares of matter accelerate already fast-moving particles, which collide with slower particles in the Sun's atmosphere, producing antimatter. Scientists had expected these collisions to happen in relatively dense regions of the solar atmosphere. If that were the case, the density would cause the antimatter to annihilate almost immediately.

Actually the sun produces positrons as part of its main reaction in the center. In order to change Hydrogen into Helium, it has to change two protons into neutrons. The positrons are what carry off the positive charge. It is just that these positrons are not likely to make it out of the sun. Instead they soon run into an electron and annihilate to produce photon(s) (most likely).

It may take the same amount of energy to produce the anti-matter but the transports potential makes up for this.

Actually this is excessively optimistic. In fact, the efficiency cannot exceed 50% for the simple reason that for every particle of antimatter produced you have to produce a particle of matter. But I doubt the efficiency is anywhere near as high as 1%, which means you need at least 100 times as much energy to produce an anti-matter equivalent.

Hmm, interesting. I didn't know anti-matter made matter explode, I just thought it cancels them out.Does anyone know why anti-matter can produce energy? Is it better than matter? What if our whole world was made of anti-matter? Would anti-matter then be called matter, and matter vice versa? Uh... I seem to be getting off topic talking about philosophy here...

They cancel each other out all right to convert the mass of both into the equivalent quantity of energy in some other form usually photons (radiation) according to the formula E=mc^2, which is a lot of energy. This happens because matter (and anti-matter) is an especially concentrated form of energy. But if the solar system was made of antimatter, the only difference besides calling matter, anti-matter and visa versa, is that we would probably be mirror images switching right and left, and switching clockwise and counterclockwise in all things.

Whole dimensions made out of antimatter colliding into matter will be quite catasrophic... It will cause something in the proportions of a nuclear bombardment... About 100,000,000,000 times worse though... I'm not quite sure whether it implodes or explodes... The more logical answer would be that it explodes as imploding will cause a miniture blackhole if my theory is not wrong...

Yes but what you are probably unaware of is that a collision of two objects traveling toward each other at near the speed of light (86.6% of the speed of light) would be just as catastrophic in the sense that it would produce the same amount of energy as if one was matter and the other antimater (but traveling very slowly). Of course the details would be different. The antimatter explosion would be more likely to produce deadly life killing radiation but any such collision of objects (big enough to notice) within our solar system would vaporize all the planets anyway. However because of the radiation a much smaller quantity of matter/antimatter annihilation would spell our doom.

But then at higher speeds the collisions of normal matter can produce a lot more energy. For example two object traveling toward each other at 98% of the speed of light would produce an explostion 5 time greater (5 times as much energy) as the collision between matter and antimatter at slow speed. This is because at such high speeds the kinetic energy (energy of motion) exceeds the mass energy of the objects by 5 times. This is, in fact, how scientists create antimatter in particle accelerators (atom smashers). Which suggests that the high velocity collision between normal matter objects is not as different from matter-antimatter low velocity collisions as I thought.
Edited April 28, 2006 by mitchellmckain (see edit history)