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Posted on 10/25/2026 3:17:44 PM PDT by DFG
This will blow your mind.
A team of physicists recently trapped a single antimatter particle for months — a delicate feat where one wrong move could’ve blown up their lab, according to new research.
Antimatter, which explodes when it comes into contact with the ordinary matter, was captured by researchers at Northwestern University and stored in a cold box where they used incredibly cold temps and magnets to suspend the particle in midair, according to findings published in the Physical Review Letters.
“We actually coaxed this very fast positron to sit there and behave for months at a time,” lead researcher Gerald Gabrielse told the tech and science outlet Interesting Engineering.
To keep it from touching anything, the team built a contraption called a “one-positron quantum cyclotron,” which uses near zero temperatures and invisible magnetic and electric forces to keep the particle floating in a vacuum, keeping it from ever touching a single wall.
The first-of-its-kind experiment put the particle into its lowest possible energy state, letting scientists control it with pinpoint precision for months without destroying it in order to study whether antimatter behaves differently than regular matter it mirrors.
The fearless physicists at Northwestern University, under the guidance of Gabrielse, first snagged the particle as it shot out of radioactive material, then froze it to just 0.3 degrees above absolute zero — negative 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit.
The hardest part, Gabrielse said, was getting the speedy particle to slow down enough to catch it.
The breakthrough could help solve one of the universe’s biggest mysteries of why nearly everything is made of regular matter, when the Big Bang should have created equal amounts of both. The antimatter
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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They somehow isolated one positron, kept it alone in suspension, and are worried what to do with it. Scotty, beam me up, this world is too crazy and gullible.
The receptionist and security guard and janitor staff are looking into the question of informed consent.
“So if one positron was going to blow up Evanston, how does my cardiologist do positron emission tomography?”
Just a bit over the top. It might take out the contraption it is held in and probably damage the lab room it is in and possibly anyone too close. I suspect the city is safe.
Apparently they didn’t think to arrange for a Jeffries Tube
Bullshit ‘blow up their lab.’ If it touched an electron they would annihilate and produce two half-GeV gamma rays. Big whoop. Who wrote this bs?
Two gamma rays. Not even enough to make a Hulk. Pure bs.
I published a paper on dilithium in the 90s.
That’s nothin.’
There is an antipope suspended within the confines of the Vatican walls at this very moment.
Why is our military still using old fashion explosives if one positron has that much destructive power?
Interesting choice of words.
I picture beakers and lab coats flying.
“ So if one positron was going to blow up Evanston, how does my cardiologist do positron emission tomography.?
The article is about an antiproton, not a positron. Still, it would not release a terrible amount of energy when annihilated with a proton. Now take a gram of each, you’d get about 32 kilotons TNT equivalent.
The article clearly states that they trapped a positron. One of the images does display an antiproton, but the trapping was carried out on a positron.
Since there is no such thing as a perfect vacuum, how did they keep than antimatter from annihilation when the positron encountered an electron? Supposedly there are nanoleaks in containers and outgassing of the material which makes the containers. And there is the quantum foam getting particle antiparticle existence flux or some such B.S.
“The breakthrough could help solve one of the universe’s biggest mysteries of why nearly everything is made of regular matter, when the Big Bang should have created equal amounts of both.”
Have they looked on the other side of Black Holes?
“The breakthrough could help solve one of the universe’s biggest mysteries of why nearly everything is made of regular matter, when the Big Bang should have created equal amounts of both.”
Have they looked on the other side of Black Holes?
“The breakthrough could help solve one of the universe’s biggest mysteries of why nearly everything is made of regular matter, when the Big Bang should have created equal amounts of both.”
Have they looked on the other side of Black Holes?
The idea that a single particle of antimatter could blow up a lab is pure scientific hyperbole or clickbait.
A subatomic particle (like a positron or an antiproton) has an unimaginably tiny mass:
The energy released by annihilating a single antiproton and a proton is roughly $1.5 \times 10^{-10}$ Joules.
To put that in perspective, 1 Joule of energy is roughly the amount it takes to lift a small apple about 10 centimeters.
The energy of that single annihilation is a billion times smaller than a single Joule. It is completely, totally imperceptible.
Comparison:
A Flea’s Hop: A flea jumping into the air uses about $1,000X times more energy than a single antimatter-matter annihilation.
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