Large Hadron Collider (LHC) creates and traps Antimatter.

That is friggin awesome. Yup, it won't be long now before it will require less energy to produce and contain antimatter than would be released by it. Sweet!
 
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Quite remarkable really.
 
aardvark said:
ermm, well no - thats impossible.
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Huh? We're not talking about creating energy from nothing here, merely capturing two particles, smashing them together, and using the energy released when they annihiliate eachother. Currently it takes too much energy to make this happen, but as they learn more about antimatter they will learn easier ways to control it, just as they've done with matter over the years.
 
Creating antimatter is no big deal. It's being able to keep hold of it for more than a tenth of a second that's the breakthrough. This isn't being done at the LHC by the way. That's a high energy collider that produces lots of heat. This is being done at a separate particle accelerator where they can keep the particles at around -270C so that they move slow enough to be trapped by magnets.
 
Raist said:
Huh? We're not talking about creating energy from nothing here, merely capturing two particles, smashing them together, and using the energy released when they annihiliate eachother. Currently it takes too much energy to make this happen, but as they learn more about antimatter they will learn easier ways to control it, just as they've done with matter over the years.
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Getting back more energy than you put in breaks several laws of thermodynamics though. You can't capture antimatter, you have to use lots of energy to create it.
 
Raist said:
Huh? We're not talking about creating energy from nothing here, merely capturing two particles, smashing them together, and using the energy released when they annihiliate eachother. Currently it takes too much energy to make this happen, but as they learn more about antimatter they will learn easier ways to control it, just as they've done with matter over the years.
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yes but by definition you cannot get more energy out than you put in - the energy it takes to make antimatter can't be less than the energy released when it annihilates, that would be creating energy from nothing.
 
Oxy said:
What is the point of holding the antimatter?

What does it do?
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That is the point :p no-one knows how it differs from matter as it's not been possible to keep it for more than a tenth of a second before. As soon as antimatter comes into contact with matter the two annihilate each other leaving nothing but energy.

When you create particles from energy you get equal amounts of matter and antimatter, yet the universe appears to consist only of matter. No-one knows how this is possible, since the big bang should have created equal amounts of each which would have then annihilated each other. Studying antimatter may help provide the answers.
 
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Oxy said:
What is the point of holding the antimatter?

What does it do?
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Can study it and check our current models work correctly. EG they can hold them long enough for the electrons to relax to the ground state, so the can measure the energy levels of the positron levels in antihydrogen. Can also check how mavity effects antimatter, so far all the theories suggest mavity is attractive for both matter and antimatter but this couldn't be physically checked before.
 
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