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Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: Anti-Matter & CERN Laboratory

*This is a bit out of my ken, but figured I'd post it.  I found it as part of a longer column article (featuring other items as well) in my Astronomy magazine e-newsletter:

Although it sounds like science fiction, physicists routinely make atoms of anti-hydrogen at the CERN laboratory in Geneva.  Now, physicists report what may be the coldest anti-atoms ever created in a lab. 
 
The Antiproton Decelerator at CERN produces, collects, cools, decelerates and extracts antimatter for use in experiments. CERN (This was an image, which I can't lift from the page)

Anti-hydrogen is the antimatter counterpart of hydrogen, the universe's most common element, and it was first detected at CERN in 1995. But the anti-atoms moved at nearly light-speed, much too fast for physicists to carry out measurements to any desirable level of accuracy. Since then, work has focused on making cold anti-hydrogen, atoms moving slow enough to trap and permit high-precision measurements of the atoms' fundamental properties.

Harvard University physicist C. H. Storry and other members of the ATRAP collaboration report a step toward this goal in the December 31, 2004, issue of Physical Review Letters. For the first time, they used lasers to improve control over the production of anti-H. A laser excites cesium atoms into specific states, then positrons — anti-electrons — collide with the atoms. Each cesium atom relinquishes one electron to a colliding positron. The electron-positron pairs, which form an atom-like entity known as positronium, inherit the excitation of the original cesium atoms. Occasionally, the positron component will latch onto a passing anti-proton, forming anti-H with the same level of excitation as the positronium.

Although the laser makes less anti-hydrogen than other methods, the control it offers over conditions within the trap will be useful in future experiments. — Francis Reddy

--Cindy

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

C M Edwards

Member

From: Lake Charles LA USA

Registered: 2002-04-29

Posts: 1,012

Re: Anti-Matter & CERN Laboratory

Well, it's about time.  I've been waiting more than a decade for further progress toward antimatter ice.

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"We go big, or we don't go."  - GCNRevenger

Shaun Barrett

Member

From: Cairns, Queensland, Australia

Registered: 2001-12-28

Posts: 2,843

Re: Anti-Matter & CERN Laboratory

CM:-

Well, it's about time.  I've been waiting more than a decade for further progress toward antimatter ice.

    Me too!
    It'd be a real talking-point to put it in martinis at your next party. Should be quite a blast.
                                                 

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The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it Jumping Up and Down.   - Rita Rudner