Billions of Positrons Created in Laboratory (anti-matter!)

Centauri Dreams ^ | 11/18/08

[LibWhacker]

Interstellar space travel, here we come!

[Kevmo]

some cosmology news

[aWolverine]

[RightWhale]

Is this the mysterious and unexpected production of possibly dark matter they just got at Livermore? Doesn’t sound like it.

[aWolverine]

[wolfcreek]

SWEET!

[Hoosier-Daddy]

What about power generation on Earth?

[wolfcreek]

This is much cooler than the Scotch tape, x-ray thingy.

[LibWhacker]

Wouldn’t that be something, dark matter AND copious quantities of anti-matter in the same experiment?

[LibWhacker]

Yep, all the power we’d ever need — at least while we’re still a Type 0 civilization.

[RightWhale]

Don’t know, but Haul Parvey had an article this morning about how they got some new kinds of particles and not in the main beam.

[chimera]

Pair production (electron-positron) is a well-understood phenomenon. I used positrons from a 22Na source as a probe for condensed matter microstructure way back in the bad old days of being a physics grad student. Making the heavier antiparticles is the the real trick. Usually the energy cost is ruinous. I think Fermilab will sell you a nanogram of anti-hydrogen for a few million dollars, all nicely entrained in a magnetic vacuum trap.

[JimRed]

Interstellar space travel, here we come!

Not without those dilithium crystals!

[B Knotts]

Are positrons what allowed the creation of Positraction?

[AFreeBird]

What about power generation on Earth?

Well, One, lets hope they can find something other than gold to turn into anti-matter. And two, how are you going to capture and store it. Last I heard, you needed some sort of magnetic containment to keep it all from smashing into matter and obliterating both. And that would require lots of power. And that doesn't count the power used for making the stuff.

Warp drive? Not any time soon.

[DannyTN]

"What about power generation on Earth?"

That would never work. We are going to need all the gold to satisfy the gold bugs desire to return to the barter community of hard currency. If we use the gold to generate anti-matter and keep warm, the goldbugs will go insane.

[Maurice Tift]

   Fermilab will sell you a nanogram of anti-hydrogen for a few million dollars, all nicely entrained in a magnetic vacuum trap.

  Years from now, we'll look at some old invoices and say - 'Wow! I can't believe I used to pay 2.5 trillion dollars for a milligram of anti-hydrogen!'

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Kevmo! of interest to the list...

[onedoug]

Yeah, sure.