CERN physicists trap antihydrogen atoms for more than 16 minutes (w/ video)
This is an artistic representation of the ALPHA neutral antimatter trap, suggesting the nature of the ALPHA apparatus as a container for antihydrogen. Credit: Chukman So, copyright © 2011 Wurtele Research Group. All rights reserved.
Trapping antihydrogen atoms at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has become so routine that physicists are confident that they can soon begin experiments on this rare antimatter equivalent of the hydrogen atom, according to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.
"We've trapped antihydrogen atoms for as long as 1,000 seconds, which is forever" in the world of high-energy particle physics, said Joel Fajans, UC Berkeley professor of physics, faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a member of the ALPHA (Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus) experiment at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.
The ALPHA team is hard at work building a new antihydrogen trap with "the hope that by 2012 we will have a new trap with laser access to allow spectroscopic experiments on the antiatoms," he said.
This video is not supported by your browser at this time.
UC Berkeley physicist Joel Fajans narrates an explanation of how the ALPHA experiment creates and traps antihydrogen atoms.
Fajans and the ALPHA team, which includes Jonathan Wurtele, UC Berkeley professor of physics, will publish their latest successes online on June 5 in advance of print publication in the journal Nature Physics. Fajans, Wurtele and their graduate students played major roles in designing the antimatter trap and other aspects of the experiment.Their paper reports that in a series of measurements last year, the team trapped 112 antiatoms for times ranging from one-fifth of a second to 1,000 seconds, or 16 minutes and 40 seconds.
Since the experiment first successfully trapped antihydrogen atoms in 2009, the researchers have captured 309.
"We'd prefer being able to trap a thousand atoms for a thousand seconds, but we can still initiate laser and microwave experiments to explore the properties of antiatoms," Fajans said.
In November 2010, Fajans, Wurtele and the ALPHA team reported their first data on trapped antihydrogen: 38 antiatoms trapped for more than one-tenth of a second each. They succeeded in capturing an antiatom in only about one in 10 attempts, however.
Toward the end of last year's experiments, they were capturing an antiatom in nearly every attempt, and were able to keep the antiatoms in the trap as long as they wanted. Realistically, trapping for 10-30 minutes will be sufficient for most experiments, as long as the antiatoms are in their lowest energy state, or ground state.
"These antiatoms should be identical to normal matter hydrogen atoms, so we are pretty sure all of them are in the ground state after a second," Wurtele said.
"These were likely the first ground state antiatoms ever made," Fajans added.
In an antihydrogen atom (top), a positively charged antielectron, or positron, orbits a negatively charged antiproton: the mirror image of an ordinary hydrogen atom (bottom). Credit: Chukman So, copyright © 2011 Wurtele Research Group. All rights reserved.
Antimatter is a puzzle because it should have been produced in equal amounts with normal matter during the Big Bang that created the universe 13.6 billion years ago. Today, however, there is no evidence of antimatter galaxies or clouds, and antimatter is seen rarely and for only short periods, for example during some types of radioactive decay before it annihilates in a collision with normal matter.Hence the desire to measure the properties of antiatoms in order to determine whether their electromagnetic and gravitational interactions are identical to those of normal matter. One goal is to check whether antiatoms abide by CPT symmetry, as do normal atoms. CPT (charge-parity-time) symmetry means that a particle would behave the same way in a mirror universe if it had the opposite charge and moved backward in time.
"Any hint of CPT symmetry breaking would require a serious rethink of our understanding of nature," said Jeffrey Hangst of Aarhus University in Denmark, spokesperson for the ALPHA experiment. "But half of the universe has gone missing, so some kind of rethink is apparently on the agenda."
ALPHA captures antihydrogen by mixing antiprotons from CERN's Antiproton Decelerator with positrons – antielectrons – in a vacuum chamber, where they combine into antihydrogen atoms. The cold neutral antihydrogen is confined within a magnetic bottle, taking advantage of the tiny magnetic moments of the antiatoms. Trapped antiatoms are detected by turning off the magnetic field and allowing the particles to annihiliate with normal matter, which creates a flash of light.
Because the confinement depends on the antihydrogen's magnetic moment, if the spin of the antiatom flips, it is ejected from the magnetic bottle and annihilates with an atom of normal matter. This gives the experimenters an easy way to detect the interaction of light or microwaves with antihydrogen, because photons at the right frequency make the antiatom's spin flip up or down.
This is an artist's image of the ALPHA trap which captured and stored antihydrogen atoms. Credit: Chukman So
Though the team has trapped up to three antihydrogen atoms at once, the goal is to trap even more for long periods of time in order to achieve greater statistical precision in the measurements.The ALPHA collaboration also will report in the Nature Physics paper that the team has measured the energy distribution of the trapped antihydrogen atoms.
"It may not sound exciting, but it's the first experiment done on trapped antihydrogen atoms," Wurtele said. "This summer, we're planning more experiments, with microwaves. Hopefully, we will measure microwave-induced changes of the atomic state of the antiatoms."
More information: "Confinement of antihydrogen for 1000 seconds," Nature Physics, http://www.nature. … s/index.html
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University of California - Berkeley
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Jun 05, 2011
Rank: 1.6 / 5 (27)
Jun 05, 2011
Rank: 3.6 / 5 (27)
Oh yea, NASA contracting out work for independant space company's to take cargo up, that's a sign of giving up on the space program. Oh yea, NASA providing grants to private space programs ... another sign NASA is giving up on space.
What a stupid person. Do you have any idea how bloated and inefficient the government is? Contracting space program work out to private companies is the most cost efficient and effective method to advancing possible.
The decisions are incredibly strategic and intelligent, you're just too naive to see the whole picture, you're blind to reality and filled with paranoia and delusion.
Is it seriously that difficult for you to do some grown-up level research before blabbering on like that?
Let me guess, you're actually hate Obama because he's black, and all this BS is a way of skirting around your real problems? Because where I stand it's amazingly obvious that NASA has not given up on space, at all.
Jun 05, 2011
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Jun 05, 2011
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side note: anti-matter energy "force field" in combo w/ an EMF field ?? (it's getting better for interstellar! :p )
Jun 05, 2011
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Jun 05, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (7)
Hardly. The energy it takes to create one atom of anti-hydrogen is atrocious. Don't count on this being the 'interstellat fuel' of tomorrow.
This is important in other respects. wWhen we can store some anti hydrogen atoms for a long time we'll finally be able to test whether antimatter reacts to gravity the same way as matter does.
Jun 05, 2011
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How long a time do you suppose would be long enough?
Jun 05, 2011
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I like the potential implications in understanding very much.
"Rethink" beats a "reboot" hands down.
Jun 05, 2011
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@Telekinetic - From the last article, the scientists seem to think 1000 seconds would be enough, they probably just need to add a cooling device. --
Jun 05, 2011
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No need to speculate it says what they need in the article.
Jun 05, 2011
Rank: 2 / 5 (5)
Now I may be a physics dunce here but what happens to the kinetic energy in a matter/antimatter collision? Obviously it would have to convert to something else in order to be conserved so... Annihilation Energy plus KE(matter) plus KE(antimatter) = Sumation of Energy released? So... the faster your ship is going the more energy is released therefore the faster you can make your ship go? *queue evil laugh*
Jun 05, 2011
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Jun 05, 2011
Rank: 2.3 / 5 (6)
While interesting, this research is unlikely to substantially benefit humanity, and with Rabid Conservatives threatening to defund all of government, we can be assured that if the Republican plan succeeds, then all science funding in America will be cancelled.
Jun 05, 2011
Rank: 3.7 / 5 (6)
You would have 1.8 E 11 Joules of pure energy that would consist of all known fundamental particles, and which would degrade largely into electrons, protons and their anti-particles (what you started with), along with gamma rays, neutrino's and other less reactive/ more stable particles.
Jun 05, 2011
Rank: 1.8 / 5 (9)
And that little children is why America is out of the space business but the socialist states of India, China, Japan, Europe and Russia aren't.
Jun 05, 2011
Rank: 1.8 / 5 (4)
You are correct. Only a matter of time before most of the private sectors for space programs follow suit and outsource everything too. Then the Us will be a museum.
Jun 05, 2011
Rank: 4.9 / 5 (8)
The reason why we are out of the manned space launch business is because we spent 9 billion on a now cancelled constellation program over the course of 4 years. 9 billion and they didn't even start building anything, just plans. How do you even spend 9 billion without producing anything? SpaceX spent 800 million over 10 years existing and orbited and recovered a capsule. Orbital and Blue Origin have spent similar money and haven't launched yet but at least have equipment built.
Didn't Boeing recently get caught bribing officials while trying to get the new tanker contract from the military? Someone aught to audit Constellation because 9 billion is a lot for a couple rough draft blue prints.
Jun 05, 2011
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Jun 06, 2011
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Jun 06, 2011
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Jun 06, 2011
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Jun 06, 2011
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@Turritopsis - Wow, too many factual errors to count. Seriously, that reads almost like delusional science fiction - just enough real concepts and science vocabulary to make it sound like you know what your talking about, but all of your key assumptions are just wrong.
1 - "individual quanta of space time" That is pure fiction. Space Time cannot be broken into quanta.
2 - "The singularity influences in infinite spacial directions... Matter is point energy." Now we're starting to get delusional.
3 - "Point energy has directionality (charge), the charge on earth is uniformly polarized." More pure fiction.
I could go on, but it just gets more delusional.
Jun 06, 2011
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How would you plug your interpretation into the Many Worlds Interpretation?
Jun 06, 2011
Rank: 3 / 5 (2)
Although I cannot get my head around the topology of negative gravity in space/time. Could the anti-matter have been propelled backwards through time at the same rate as we are being propelled forward? So many questions, such a little brain.
Jun 06, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (3)
This work was done at CERN (which is not in the US)
agreed. Take an introductory science course (or spend 30 minutes on wikipedia) before stating these kinds of hypotheses. You'll easily be able to figure out that they are ridiculous.
Jun 06, 2011
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Jun 06, 2011
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Fermi should really have been utilized for attempts at Anti particle production and containment.
Yes, it costs a tremendous amount of energy to produce this particle, but the point of the effort is that you can then take this particle for a more efficient light weight space propellant.
When this is possible, then we can start talking about space ships, like those in the movies, that flies off and lands on it's own propulsion.
Jun 06, 2011
Rank: 2.6 / 5 (10)
Ask Georgie Porgie Bush who's 4 trillion dollar war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan will produce nothing but 10,000 more dead Americans and a bankrupt nation.
Perhaps that was the plan....
Just as Bankrupting NASA by a failure to adequately fund the stated goals was Bushie's goal.
Jun 06, 2011
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Jun 06, 2011
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Jun 06, 2011
Rank: 1.4 / 5 (9)
Delusion is false conceptualization. By definition on the subject matter everyone with an opinion is deluded. No one has the answer. We interpret the world around us and use the same interpretative tools to prove/disprove our intuitive assessment. Convoluted enough yet? The truth is intelligence levels may differ within humans but we are all relatively equal of intelligence when looking from a higher perspective. The average human iq is 100, some humans are below this line while others are above it. An infinite iq is required to know all.
So, I'll agree with you. My point of view may be deluded. But if you think my point of view is wrong you're either not conceptualizing it, or, your delusions stretch far further than mine.
Jun 06, 2011
Rank: 3 / 5 (4)
Jack Kennedy was a sex addict and son of a Prohibition era rum runner and murderer, so you're right, Obama is no Jack Kennedy.
Jun 06, 2011
Rank: 1.7 / 5 (6)
It is required. The universe took energy to come into existence. This means the universe was preceded. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Our universe is energetic and it acquired (and might still be acquiring) this energy from something. Stating that the universe emerged from a singularity of infinite mass and density is fine and dandy but what caused this singularity? In a supernova vast amounts of energy are used in creating a singularity. It is a safe bet stating that more is out there than meets the eye. Many worlds may be out there, but with 100% certainty we can say that another world caused ours. This leaves us with 2 knowns. Following this train of thought you'll see that the world responsible for ours emerged from somewhere as well. Most likely scenario is that of infinite worlds comprising the unknown. With 100% certainty we can state that there are many worlds out there.
Jun 06, 2011
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Jun 06, 2011
Rank: 2.6 / 5 (5)
1. Can the Higgs field be quantized? How about the Higgs boson?
2. (unaddressed) Take a rock and travel the earth. Let go at the north pole. Does it fall? Southpole? Is there a spot on earth where the rock doesn't fall? No. Seems like gravity is there in infinite directions abound a point of mass (that point being the earth in this example).
3. Give me an example of a massive particle without charge, and not a relatively chargeless neutrino, a true massive particle of zero charge (and not zero net charge as in a neutron).
Your criticism is deconstructive in nature, try communicating in a more civil manner and I'll continue addressing your points in the future. I don't think I have all the answers or some ultimate truth, I just enjoy discussing the thoughts I have. Am I overstepping some boundaries here? I don't regard myself as being better than the next guy, it seems to me that you do.
Jun 06, 2011
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Think huge solar power stations in near-sol orbits beaming maser/laser energy to antimatter factories in more suitable orbits. History shows civilization consistantly producing more energy per capita in ever more concentrated form.
Antimatter fuel would be a logical extension of of this, good for powering vehicles of great mobility and range and applicable power. Today's analogue would be the nuclear sub.
Jun 06, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
The earth is not a point of mass. We do not live on a singularity.
The higgs field is not space time. Space time cannot be quantized which you said could be. Dont change the subject. But even if you want to talk about the higgs field fine -- It also cannot be quantized.
Jun 06, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
The shuttle was a military vehicle. The US continues it's military efforts by announcing it's intent to take the 'high ground', that being the asteroid belt, mars moons and such.
Other govts are parsing out the inner system per agreement for strategic security. Commercial devt is being turned over to the private sector where it belongs.
The solar system, like earth itself, will be developed according to Plan. Any squabbles will be Prearranged and will be Constructive in nature. As usual.
Jun 06, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
The inventor of alternating current, Nikola Tesla, proposed this very idea over a hundred years ago. He also claimed that free energy could be harnessed, and some say he demonstrated it. The folks at Westinghouse were not in the business of giving anything away for free and pulled his funding.
Jun 06, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (3)
This is precisely one of the problems in contemporary physics; whether spacetime is discrete or not. Loop Quantum Gravity says it might be so, but please, I ask of you:
do not come with bold, dogmatic claims about something no one knows as of yet.
Jun 06, 2011
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Jun 06, 2011
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Your concept of time is limited and is confusing you. Time slows for objects in a gravitational well. Hence there need be no begining. dt -> 0 as r -> 0
Jun 06, 2011
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Why not?
Jun 06, 2011
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It is a particle isn't it? Doesn't that imply to you that it is already quantized? If not, then it damn well should.
Jun 06, 2011
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Are you the same Vendicar Decarian who made presidential death threats that nearly got you thrown off of the internet?
Jun 06, 2011
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http://en.wikiped...smission
Jun 06, 2011
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Wireless power transmission- the essential point I'm making.
Jun 07, 2011
Rank: 1.5 / 5 (4)
Anti-matter isn't anti-mass. It is just normal matter which has an opposite charge.
Negative Gravity is quite impossible as it would permit the creation of a perpetual motion machine.
Jun 07, 2011
Rank: 3.7 / 5 (3)
I agree, but there is a missing element to this statement. Space Exploration is almost NEVER profitable! So leaving it up to private industry means we will have a bunch of people sending up cheap little craft that achieve this or that. You need a government to fund Space Exploration because:
1. There is little to gain except the advancement of mankind and the boosting of morale for the country responsible, and mankind in general.
2. You need BIG MONEY. Governments have big money, companies can have big money too, but that money is from Investors who want profit in return. Again, there is little profit to be had by private companies going into space.
3. It worked in the 60's, it can work again. We need to drop all support for third-world crapholes and start building the next generation of space craft, a space station, etc.
Jun 07, 2011
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Jun 07, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
http://en.wikiped...timatter
http://www.physic...239.html
Jun 07, 2011
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1) There is an enormous amount to gain including unlimited room, energy, and resources, not to mention the fact that humankind is doomed if it confines itself to one planet in a single solar system in the midst of a very violent universe.
2) The amount of money in existance is directly proportional to the amount of work being done or intended to be done. Whatever money is needed can be, and is routinely, made available.
3) It worked in the 60s, it can work again. We were both supporting, and warring against, third world crapholes halfway round the globe, and still were able to comfortably put many men on the moon. The tech has matured; time for Big Business to do it in a Big Way through the healthy impetus of competition.
Jun 07, 2011
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Regarding your own vision of the future-
"Think huge solar power stations in near-sol orbits beaming maser/laser energy to antimatter factories in more suitable orbits"
Jun 07, 2011
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Jun 07, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
"Getting down to basic and simplified apparatus for utilizing such radiant energy as that possessed by the sun's rays, both visible and invisible, we may consider the apparatus of this nature devised by Dr. Nikola Tesla, the well-known electrical scientist. His United States patents on Apparatus for the Utilization of Radiant Energy? bear the numbers 685,957 and 685,958."
Had he lived, I doubt that we would be in need of antimatter factories for space travel. Nice fantasy, though.
Jun 08, 2011
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Jun 08, 2011
Rank: 1.3 / 5 (3)
Spin is the distinguishing attribute defining the nature of matter (anti or not). Polarization is spin alignment. Spin produces charge which produces a field (polar), particles align themselves in accordance with the fields they generate which is directly resultant of spin. Antimatters spin is inverse to that of matter (a mirror image).
We can harness antimatter by producing electromagnetic containment fields and use it as fuel, or, we can harness the energy produced when matter and antimatter merge, light.
Jun 08, 2011
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Jun 08, 2011
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Jun 08, 2011
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Jun 08, 2011
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They annihilate in a flash of light. Energy and matter is interchangable as proven by Einstein. Their energy is conserved after annihilation. The theoretical matter antimatter annihilator engine uses gamma radiation (high energy photons, or high energy light) to propel the ship.
Jun 08, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (2)
Without matter&antimatter there is no light and without light there is no matter&antimatter. Light is the combination of negative and positive spin - a wave - light splits into negative and positive particles. Recombination of negatively and positively charged particles produces light. The splitting of light produces negatively and positively charged particles.
Jun 08, 2011
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Jun 08, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
"right?" Absolutely. Matter antimatter interaction is the only absolute conversion of matter to energy. 100% of the fuel is converted into energy during the interaction, that's why it is labeled as particle annihilation.
The question is though, where is the gas station should the unexpected take place?
If we harnessed a blackhole we could extrapolate the virtual particle pairs in its vicinity while allowing them to annihilate in a directional drive. A blackhole would make the greatest interstellar generator. Its not only that particle antiparticle pairs are found around a blackhole but we could skip space all together by bringing our destination directly to us.
But how do you contain a blackhole without it consuming you and your spacecraft?
Jun 08, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
Even beaming energy from the sun to the earth would require a chain of lenses to refocus and intensify the beam.
Beaming energy to the ship is not a real option. The ship needs to be independently powered. Meaning the power source: sun, blackhole, or whatever, needs to be a part of the ship itself.
Jun 08, 2011
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Jun 08, 2011
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Jun 08, 2011
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Our fusion reactors need continual compression (closing confining magnets)
Jun 08, 2011
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Jun 08, 2011
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Jun 08, 2011
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Jun 08, 2011
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Blackholes are powerful on their own. We wouldn't need to throw hydrogen in them to get energy out of them. There are many potential ways of harnessing their power.
Jun 09, 2011
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Jun 09, 2011
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If antimatter had repulsive gravitational forces with matter how would it even annihilate with it in the experiments in cern?
Jun 09, 2011
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Just like gravity doesn't prevent two objects from flying past each other (if they are fast enough) antigravity wouldn't prevent matter and antimatter from hitting one another (also provided they are fast enough)
But I'm not counting on antimatter having antigravity effects, because that would necessitate for antimatter to have negative mass...which in turn would not lead to an energy burst when the two come in contact but a 'negative-energy' burst.
While we can create short intervals of negative energy potential - at the cost of longer intervals of cumulatively higher positive energy - we do not observe such negative energy when matter and anti-matter come into contact.
Jun 09, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
http
://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghettification
-You should try to temper your prognostications with a few 'what about's and 'maybe if's just in case you're missing some key info?
Jun 09, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (3)
The atoms comprising your body will fuse into the singularity, further out from the singularity your body will still be under gravitational forces equating to that of a star. Your atoms will literally begin fusing to each other before falling into the blackhole. But there is more to consider. Like the rotation of the blackhole. If the blackhole is rotating at a rate equivalent to light speed the blackhole will shred you up, disintegrate your atoms creating subatomic particles out of them, super-rotating blackholes are known shredders.
A blackhole with slow or no spin swallows up everything. Grb's take place at fast rotating blackholes. BH's whose rotational speed approaches that of light.
Jun 09, 2011
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Jun 09, 2011
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I definitely feel you though. I should be lighter with the approach. It does sound as if I'm drilling information in instead of bringing matters up.
Let's blame brevity. :)
Jun 09, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (4)
What is meant by the "polarization of charge"?
Partially because of that; largely because of the energy needed to create the conditions within which antimatter can condense. Remember that each antiproton costs at least 938 MeV of energy.
Without space the concept of "points" is meaningless.
They do not so much *cause* each other as *be* each other, with interconversion possible.
Jun 09, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (3)
No, holes are not positrons. If they were, they would annihilate with local electrons and the semiconductors would not work. The motion of holes is considered as the flow of positive charge with *negative* mass.
No, it does not. They are separate aspects of matter. (There are particles with spin but no charge, for instance, even though there are none with charge but no spin.)
Jun 09, 2011
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Jun 10, 2011
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why can't we delete our own messages?
Jun 10, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (2)
...Go ahead, now, we're waiting....
Jul 20, 2011
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