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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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How much power did THAT take? And the cooling system would put any Data Center to shame.
Where are the antimatter protests?
(I’m kidding of course.)
So if one positron was going to blow up Evanston, how does my cardiologist do positron emission tomography?
The one and only, original Star Trek
• “The Alternative Factor” (Season 1, Episode 27)
Plot: The USS Enterprise investigates mysterious spatial disruptions that cause reality to “wink out” across the galaxy. The crew encounters Lazarus, a man who moves between our universe and a parallel universe composed of antimatter. If his matter self and antimatter self touch, it will trigger total matter-antimatter annihilation.
From Wikipedia, for those who might be interested:
“Perhaps the best known naturally occurring radioisotope which produces positrons is potassium-40, a long-lived isotope of potassium which occurs as a primordial isotope of potassium. Even though it is a small percentage of potassium (0.0117%), it is the single most abundant radioisotope in the human body. In a human body of 70 kg (150 lb) mass, about 4,400 nuclei of 40K decay per second.[35] The activity of natural potassium is 31 Bq/g.[36] About 0.001% of these 40K decays produce about 4,000 natural positrons per day in the human body.[37] These positrons soon find an electron, undergo annihilation, and produce pairs of 511 keV photons, in a process similar (but much lower intensity) to that which happens during a PET scan nuclear medicine procedure.”
If the author of that piece is worried about positrons, he might want to stay away from bananas - they’re full of potassium, the radioactive isotopes of which are merrily spewing out positrons as they undergo decay on your kitchen counter.
"Some" scientists are troubled by the current big bang theory.
What interests me are some details not covered by this B- article: how did they recognize what they had, are they retaining it, and how can they set it free?
The black hole that sucked up the last universe after it quit expanding and started collapsing? That black hole?
The black hole that sucked up the last universe after it quit expanding and started collapsing? That black hole?
The black hole that sucked up the last universe after it quit expanding and started collapsing?
Cute story, but their math is a bit off, if it’s one positron.
Nice! I may have to borrow that one day.
Oh boy, a new superbomb in the works.
Only if he can kiss the green girl.
Uh oh. What about my daily potassium supplement?
Antimatter has been trapped in synchrotrons for extended periods; hours, at least.
To harness the power of matter and anit-matter, they need to use the dilithium crystals. Everyone knows that. It isn’t news.
Well I see a potential for future space flight propulsion!
For years theyve talked about detonating nuclear bomblets as propulsion. If antimatter molecules explode with enough force to level a lab, just think of the thrust created with a small injection of antimatter and regular matter into a combustion chamber!?? we’re talking potential warp drives here!! And, being space is near absolute zero, this would give for a stable environment temperature for the antimatter!
Let me call my boy Musk and talk over future plans!...
PET scans put antimatter into people,
and the first came from the cyclotron
under the Harvard glass flowers.
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