Datahopa

AUDIO: 'The interesting puzzle' of antimatter

Prof Jeffrey Hangst explains the importance of the capture of antimatter by physicists

Source: AUDIO: 'The interesting puzzle' of antimatter (http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/today/hi/today/newsid_9505000/9505456.stm)

So they managed to make antimatter and keep it alive, so to speak, for 16 minutes.

It's the stuff sience fiction is made of.

Impresive 

Cool, how come that was not headline news ?

I think they did it last year. Not the first time anti-hydrogen was made but this is the longest they've been able to contain it.
Anti-protons and positrons are fairly easy to contain 'cos they're charged (just oposite to protons and electrons). Anti-hydrogen is more difficult due to no charge.
I think the maths works out to you need 2.3 grams of anti-hydrogen to put the shuttle into orbit. At current rates of production, that would take about 10,000 years to make and alot of energy.

I thought anti matter hadn't even been discovered yet  :o

Show's how much I know lol

There is an anti-proton generator at CERN. It's been there for as long as CERN has.
They couldn't do any collisions without it. The accelerator ring only accelerates charge one way. This means protons go one way and anti-protons go the other. They are kept apart with their magic magnets, then the two beams are collided with each other at the 4 points where the detectors are (Atlas, Alice, CMS, LHCb).

I call the magnets "magic" 'cos they run at 8.3 Tesla. Iron melts at 2 Tesla. And they superconduct.