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Scientists trap and tame a single particle of antimatter for months (news.northwestern.edu)
submitted 3 days ago by to c/science@lemmy.world
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[–] 103 points 3 days ago (28 children)

This is actually really exciting! I fucking love anti-matter, always been fascinated by it.

If anti-matter can exist, why is our universe made of matter? This is the Baryon Asymmetry question that this research seeks to answer. The team has proven they can isolate a single positron. The next step is to measure it to as much accuracy as they have with the electron. Perhaps they will find differences!

Summer '25 CERN showed that anti-matter baryons (protons, neutrons, etc) decay differently - link. So there's a good chance they might find something!

Would love to actually see anti-matter but that's a long way off. Really hope anti-matter likes to stick together and we could actually build atoms out of it. Would be crazy to study the properties of anti-water! Maybe that's just science fiction. In any case, very excited for the coming research!

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  • [–] 13 points 3 days ago (7 children)

    If you love antimatter. eat banana. It contains traces of antimatter.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (2 children)

    Bananas always get the hype for being particularly rich in potassium-40, which is the unstable isotope, but Brazil nuts have far more, and potato and carrot are about as radioactive as banana.

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  • [–] 15 points 3 days ago (5 children)

    I always assume it's the same reason why are have mostly right handed people. It's just that the scales tipped at some point and it had to go down one way from that point.

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  • [–] 24 points 3 days ago (2 children)

    Yeah probably but the important bit is why!

    Good point about right handedness! That is actually quite fascinating as well because in most other primates it's a 50/50 split.

    Turns out walking is probably the major factor and our brains created the split - link. Still more questions though lol

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  • [–] 0 points 2 days ago

    I actually think I solved that one a long time ago. I want with right, it works. Left--feels weird. Not like a good sort of "someone else is doing it" feeling like if you sit on your hand until it goes numb sort of thing.

    But I digress. I think that mostly the survivors won the war regarding how to pleasure themselves and therefore have more of a reason to survive.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    I think the universe actually is perfectly balanced between antimatter and matter, but variation across space emerged as space expanded and our entire observable universe happens to be in a pocket where there was more matter than antimatter.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago

    Sounds reasonable. Assuming matter and antimatter split into equal parts that would have to be the case. I'm not sure if annihilation is a perfect process. Assuming energy density creates separation of energy into matter and antimatter of equal parts and no sudden annihilation happens, that would most certainly result in such a conclusion.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 days ago* (12 children)

    "Would love to actually see anti-matter" - are you being literal here? because that would require a vacuum between your eyes and antimatter that emits at a visible frequency. Not entirely impossible, but detection and recording of an anti-hydrogen transition wavelength is more easily achievable. This might be no more than an LCD display indicating a non-zero number though. Exciting for sure, but not necessarily a visual spectacle.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 days ago* (5 children)

    Yeah very literal. Would need millions of atoms of the stuff. Actually maybe that's too dangerous lol

    We have managed to see a single strontium atom - link. Maybe that's attainable with anti-matter.

    But yeah you're right, capturing an anti-hyrdogen emission would be an huge achievement itself!

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  • [–] 6 points 3 days ago (3 children)

    Make the glass of anti water on the moon just in case heh.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago

    Just for fun I did the Maths.

    Rougly a 100ml glass of anti-water has 100g of anti-water (assuming same density as normal pure water, which is around 1).

    When anti-mater contacts mater it transforms into energy according to E = mc^2^ were E is in Joule and m is in kg.

    For 100g of anti-water to turn into energy in this way it also needs 100g of normal mater, so the number is doubled.

    Using the rounded 300,000,000 m/s for the constant c, the energy released by the annihilation of a 100ml glass of anti-water (and the matching 100g of normal mater) would be 1.8e+16 Joules, equivalent to around 4.3 Megatons of TNT.

    So basically a regular nuclear bomb.

    PS: I actually expected it would be much more energy before I did the maths.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 days ago (5 children)

    You did not just write "LCD display". Feel ashamed! >:V

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