Exotic antimatter detected at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider

[n2doc]

Published: Thursday, March 4, 2010 - 18:28 in Physics & Chemistry

An international team of scientists studying high-energy collisions of gold ions at the <http://www.bnl.gov/rhic/> Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a 2.4-mile-circumference particle accelerator located at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, has published evidence of the most massive antinucleus discovered to date. The new antinucleus, discovered at RHIC's <http://www.bnl.gov/rhic/STAR.asp> STAR detector , is a negatively charged state of antimatter containing an antiproton, an antineutron, and an anti-Lambda particle. It is also the first antinucleus containing an anti-strange quark. The results will be published online by Science Express on March 4, 2010. "This experimental discovery may have unprecedented consequences for our view of the world," commented theoretical physicist Horst Stoecker, Vice President of the Helmholtz Association of German National Laboratories. "This antimatter pushes open the door to new dimensions in the nuclear chart — an idea that just a few years ago, would have been viewed as impossible."

The discovery may help elucidate models of neutron stars and opens up exploration of fundamental asymmetries in the early universe.

more:

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2010/03/04/exotic.antimatter.detected.relativistic.heavy.ion.collider

[JuniperLea]

1. "an idea that just a few years ago, would have been viewed as impossible"

This is what I love about science... no matter how convinced a scientist is, no matter how "impossible" something sounds to the scientific community... shit happens and blows "rules" out of the water!

[DavidDvorkin]

15. That's one of (Arthur C.) Clarke's Laws:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

[Joe Chi Minh]

16. "3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Thank you. It

will do in the heads of the neo-Darwinists, who think there's nothing Darwin didn't 'splain. God's redundant. Big time.

[truedelphi]

17. Since living in the boonies, and experiencing the destruction of major

Appliances every time P G & E has a small outage and then WOMPS the power back on, I am beginning to believe in God more than science.

Aren't circuti breakers atttached to most large appliances like The Furnace?

And why don't those circuit breaker thing-ees work.

<sorry for the drift from the overall topic, but I am beginning to see why some people think God is around.>

[Joe Chi Minh]

18. You're getting there, True.

[RC]

2. This antimatter pushes open the door to new dimensions...

And some anti-matter fool rushes through the door and annihilates hisself.

[Fumesucker]

3. Eh, if he does it on a normal matter planet he's going to take a good chunk of the planet with him..

A hundred and fifty kilos of antimatter reacting with the same amount of matter is going to make quite a bang..

Probably right up there with the dinosaur killer impact as far as energy release..

[caraher]

4. Actually, it would be quite a bit less

Though still more than enough to ruin your day. We can calculate how big these bangs would be quite easily.

For the matter-antimatter, use E=mc^2; plug in 300 kg and the speed of light and you get 2.7 x 10^19 J.

For the asteroid, use good old Newtonian physics: 0.5 m v^2. I've got an estimate from a textbook that says the asteroid had a mass of about 10^12 metric tons, or 10^15 kg. Its speed would have been comparable to Earth's orbital speed of 30 km/s=30,000 m/s. This gives 4.5 x 10^23 J, larger by a factor of about 17,000.

[unblock]

10. i would think it would be a LOT less. you wouldn't get a complete anihilation

for the same reason that the first atomic bombs were such an engineering challenge, the immense force from the first bits of anihilation would blow the rest of the matter/antimatter apart.

you need something with incredible force to contain all that long enough to have a complete anihilation.

[Fumesucker]

12. Unless the explosion threw the antimatter into space it's going to react with some normal matter..

Even if it's just air or more likely plasma..

An antimatter reaction is not really the same thing as a nuclear one and a lot easier to set off (assuming you have antimatter in the first place).

[Statistical]

13. That only works in atomic bombs because they only thing they react with is fissile material.

So as the bomb detonates most of the fissile material spreads out so rapidly much that it becomes sub-critical in a few thousands of a seconds.

This wouldn't apply to matter-antimatter annihilation. Unlike an atomic bomb where fissile material only reacts with neutrons in critical mass of fissile material antimatter would react with any matter.

All of it would keep annihilating until it either the matter or anti-matter was exhausted.

[Statistical]

14. It is exactly double that. 300kg of antimatter would anihilate itself and 300kg of matter.

So 600kg total would be completely converted to energy.

[caraher]

19. I already did that

the original post on this posited 150 kg of antimatter. That's why I plugged in 300 kg - 150 kg matter, 150 kg antimatter

And in any case, a factor of 2 is no big deal - this is really an order-of-magnitude calculation

[Deep13]

5. There's only one way to explain this.

WITCH!!!!

[Soylent Brice]

6. LMAO

:rofl:

[Soylent Brice]

7. thanks for the article. neat stuff!!

[gateley]

8. K&R -- not that I understand it, but I'm excited anyway! Thanks!! nt

[Yuugal]

9. K&R

[hootinholler]

11. Wow an electron stripper pole

whodda thunk it?

:shrug:

-Hoot