Anti-Matter Concerns

[FrostyBoy]

If any of you have been following the research at CERN, you will know they have made quite a lot of progress.

But what scares me is that they are trying to produce a large quantity of Anti-Matter, the problem is that this stuff is so unstable that it explodes when it touches any matter, which means you have to keep it in a vacuum.

The stuff makes Nuclear energy look like the little sister and anti-matter the big brother. If CERN produces enough of it, and suddenly it all explodes, they could blow half of Europe off the map.

Please, someone tell me what they are doing is not insane.

[Kuciwalker]

It's not insane. You don't have any sense of scale.

[FrostyBoy]

wow, thanks for the indepth explanation!

[KrazyHorse]

Did you just read angels and devils, you silly little man?

[KrazyHorse]

We've been making antimatter for many decades now...

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
It's not insane. You don't have any sense of scale.

The biggest limiting factor in the production of antimatter is the availability of antiprotons. Recent data released by CERN states that when fully operational their facilities are capable of producing 10^7 antiprotons per second. Assuming an optimal conversion of antiprotons to antihydrogen (which is far from true) it would take two billion years (give or take a few thousand) to produce 1 gram of antihydrogen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter

1g antimatter annihilating with 1g matter = 1.8*10^14 J

= 44 kilotons TNT equivalent

So it would take 2 billion years at current production rates to make enough to equal a small nuclear bomb.

[KrazyHorse]

Assuming you could trap them indefinitely

Which, by the way, is far from true

Containment of antimatter is very, very hard

[Seeker]

Hey..if they can make anti-protons, does that mean that we can creat new normal protons and thereby avoid the Proton Decay Death of the Universe?

[KrazyHorse]

Given that nobody's yet seen seen a proton decay I'm not too worried about all the protons disappearing.

[DaShi]

Isn't hydrogen basically just a proton?

[Frozzy]

A hydrogen ion, yes.

[DaShi]

That's the only important form of hydrogen.

[Seeker]

KH...that's your real problem..you just don't think long-term enough!

[Bill3000]

Aw, look at that. You're making poor deuterium over there crying.

[DaShi]

Tritium is better than deuterium. Everyone knows this!