WE ARE SURROUNDED BY ANTIMATTER EVERYBODY PANIC

THE ONLY WAY OUT IS TO TUNNEL THROUGH THE EARTH AND BEG THE HYPERBORIANS FOR SAFE PASSAGE THROUGH THE FOURTH DIMENSION GIVE THEM ANYTHING THEY WANT OUR CIVILIZATION IS AT STAKE. PRIDE IS A LUXURY OF AN AGE OF INNOCENCE WE SHALL NEVER KNOW AGAIN. TELL US OF OUR DOOM, BBC!

A thin band of antimatter particles called antiprotons enveloping the Earth has been spotted for the first time.

The find, described in Astrophysical Journal Letters, confirms theoretical work that predicted the Earth’s magnetic field could trap antimatter. The team says a small number of antiprotons lie between the Van Allen belts of trapped “normal” matter. The researchers say there may be enough to implement a scheme using antimatter to fuel future spacecraft.

The antiprotons were spotted by the Pamela satellite (an acronym for Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) – launched in 2006 to study the nature of high-energy particles from the Sun and from beyond our Solar System – so-called cosmic rays.

These cosmic ray particles can slam into molecules that make up the Earth’s atmosphere, creating showers of particles. Many of the cosmic ray particles or these “daughter” particles they create are caught in the Van Allen belts, doughnut-shaped regions where the Earth’s magnetic field traps them. Among Pamela’s goals was to specifically look for small numbers of antimatter particles among the far more abundant normal matter particles such as protons and the nuclei of helium atoms.

The new analysis, described in an online preprint, shows that when Pamela passes through a region called the South Atlantic Anomaly, it sees thousands of times more antiprotons than are expected to come from normal particle decays, or from elsewhere in the cosmos. The team says that this is evidence that bands of antiprotons, analogous to the Van Allen belts, hold the antiprotons in place – at least until they encounter the normal matter of the atmosphere, when they “annihilate” in a flash of light.

 

Some hobbyists collect stamps; others probe the very heart of matter

(above) Richard Handl, whose name is sometimes transliterated as "Ray Palmer"

To each their own. Via the Washington Post:

 A Swedish man who was arrested after trying to split atoms in his kitchen said Wednesday he was only doing it as a hobby.

Richard Handl told The Associated Press that he had the radioactive elements radium, americium and uranium in his apartment in southern Sweden when police showed up and arrested him on charges of unauthorized possession of nuclear material.

…

Although he says police didn’t detect dangerous levels of radiation in his apartment, he now acknowledges the project wasn’t such a good idea.

“From now on, I will stick to the theory,” he said.

Usually, I find private experimentation that could potentially bring harm to unwitting bystandards reprehensible—hell, I don’t even like fireworks. But for some reason, I can’t help but admire Handl.

I’m brought to mind of Michio Kaku, the theoretical physicist who as a teenager built a functional particle accelerator in his parents’ garage. Both stood upon the shoulders of giants and reach to touch the world’s deepest core with their own hands, reaffirming the accessibility and practicality of knowledge we usually assume can only be uttered in the esoteric cloisters of the ivory tower.   

Which is not to say what Handl did was probably not incredibly reckless and deserving punishment. Yet I still hope Handl gets a light sentence and, before fading from the public consciousness, goes on to become a popularizer and demystifier of nuclear physics. As the industrial world burns off its fossil fuels, the much maligned specter of nuclear power could use a friendly public face.

Towards an antimatter Periodic Table

…and some of the difficulties along the way:

Because the production of antimatter takes incredible amounts of energy, and because of the short life expectancy of antimatter in our matter-rich neck of the universe, making antielements is tough work. But two recent discoveries have bolstered the hope that we can—someday—fill in more of the anti-periodic table.

In March, an international team working at Brookhaven National Laboratory announced the creation of the first nucleus of antihelium-4 (He-4), the counterpart of element No. 2, helium. Scientists had created antihelium-3 before, but antihelium-4 combines more antimatter than scientists have ever seen in one place. It also supplies further proof that antimatter can bind together in stable clusters just as matter does, something scientists suspected but hadn’t confirmed.

Equally important, scientists at CERN announced in late April that they’d developed a way to capture antihydrogen for the first time. Previous setups created antihydrogen at extremely high temperatures, and scientists could hold onto these antiatoms (in electric and magnetic “traps”) for just fractions of a second before they flitted away. A new technique, which cools the antimatter down first, makes trapping them easier, and the CERN group held onto a cache of antihydrogen for more than 15 minutes. This technique should deepen our understanding of how to create antimatter, since scientists can now conduct detailed experiments on it for the first time. (Since antimatter opposes matter in every behavior, antihydrogen atoms should be repelled by earth’s gravity and “fall up.”)

When I first heard this news, I thought, Two antielements down, just 116 to go! Unfortunately, getting to the next antielement, antilithium, could take years. The production rate of antimatter drops 1,000 times for every antiproton or antineutron you have to add. So creating Li (which has three antiprotons, three antineutrons) would be approximately 1 million times harder than creating He-4, probably beyond the reach of our current equipment.

But there might be another way to find antilithium. Scientists study antimatter partly to solve one of the deepest mysteries of the universe. The Big Bang should have created matter and antimatter in equal amounts—which means everything in existence should have annihilated itself eons ago. Yet there seems to be quite an abundance of matter around, and no one knows why. Perhaps the Big Bang didn’t create equal amounts. Or, perhaps it shot massive clumps of matter and antimatter in different directions. In that case, there should be entire antimatter galaxies out there. Studying antihydrogen and antihelium should help scientists learn how to detect those antielements across deep space, in antistars. And if there’s antihydrogen and antihelium out there, there’s bound to be antilithium, anticarbon, antigold, and even, with some luck, anti-beings who do anti-chemistry based on their through-the-looking-glass periodic tables.