The scientists hope to repeat the experiment and learn more about the nature of antimatter and whether the CPT symmetry is also broken like each of its components individually
In a study published in the journal Nature Physics this week (June 5, 2011), researchers working in the Alpha Bessern experiment report that they have managed to capture antimatter atoms for over 16 minutes - enough time to begin studying their properties in detail. Alpha is part of the larger antiproton detector program at CERN, which investigates the mysteries of one of nature's most elusive types of particles.
Today we live in a universe composed entirely of matter, but in the Big Bang matter and antimatter were created in equal amounts. It seems that nature had very little preference for matter, which allowed the universe and everything we see in it to exist. One way to investigate nature's preference for matter is to compare the hydrogen atoms with their acceptors in antimatter, and therefore the present study is important.
"We managed to capture anti-hydrogen atoms for, for example, a thousand seconds," explains Alpha experiment spokesman Geoffrey Hengest from Aarhus University. "That's enough time to start investigating them - even in the small amount we've been able to capture so far."
In the article, the researchers describe that they captured and studied 300 anti-hydrogen atoms. The capture of the antiatoms will allow these atoms to be mapped using laser or microwave spectroscopy so that they can be compared to hydrogen atoms, which are among the most familiar systems in physics. Any difference should be visible after careful examination. The capture of the anti-atoms can also provide a complementary approach to measuring the effect of gravity on anti-matter, which will soon also be investigated in the AEgIS experiment.
An important consequence of trapping the anti-hydrogen for a long period of time is that the anti-atoms have time to relax and return to their resting state, which will allow Alpha to make precise measurements essential to the study of the symmetry known as CPT, a symmetry in physics that describes how the process looks under different transformations. C for example is involved in exchanging the charged electrons of the particles involved in the process. P is like looking in a mirror, while T involves reversing the arrow of time.
Individually, each of the symmetries is broken - a process that makes it impossible to see them, however in CPT we say that a particle moving forward in time in our world is indistinguishable from an anti-particle moving backward in time in the mirror universe, and this is how nature will treat it. CPT symmetry requires that the hydrogen and anti-hydrogen have the same spectrum.
"Any hint of CPT symmetry breaking would require a serious rethinking of our understanding of nature," Hengest said. "But half of the universe is missing, so a certain kind of rethinking is on the horizon."
The next step for Alpha will be to start making anti-hydrogen capture measurements, which will happen later this year. The next capture will illuminate the trapped atoms with light in the micro range, to find out if they absorb exactly the same frequency (or energies) as the corresponding atoms.
"If you hit anti-hydrogen atoms with the right frequency with microwaves, they will escape from the trap and we will be able to detect their ionization - even of a single atom" explains Hangst. "This will provide the first ever look into the structure of antihydrogen - the number one element on the periodic table."
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It's bullshit. No one has discovered antimatter.
This research has other partners in Israel.
Ehud, I understand. Thanks for the explanation.
point,
Antimatter is not just the mirror image of matter. The concept of antimatter must be understood in the context of the Permian Sea.
In this context it can be understood that there is a problem with energy conservation in the transfer of matter to antimatter. When Paul Dirac obtained solutions with negative energy, he assumed the existence of particles with negative energy, he understood these particles as holes in the Fermi Sea. The physical picture is of a collection of fermions that are in the ground state, they fill different states because of Pauli's prohibition, this state is the fermionic vacuum state. Excitation of a vacuum moves a particle to an excited state and leaves behind a hole which is the antiparticle. To excite a particle, you must give at least twice the rest mass that produces a particle and an antiparticle. Because of the Fermi Sea, matter cannot be transferred to antimatter. There is no quantum mechanism that can transform a particle into an antiparticle because the fermionic vacuum is full.
sympathetic. There is no violation of conservation of energy here. The energy is obtained from the conversion of matter itself into energy (matter and antimatter become energy). All that is needed is to somehow cause what we call matter to become antimatter. I do not see a violation of conservation law in such a coup. Unless I'm missing something. When I said quantumly I meant that somehow matter will turn into antimatter (for whatever that means) with no input of energy at all.
Just because we produce antimatter in a certain way, doesn't mean it's the only way to produce antimatter.
Particles are created spontaneously from the void. and quantum jumps occur spontaneously. I would love to hear if there is some kind of symmetry that will be broken that, in principle, does not allow such a process to happen.
man,
Questions of safety and safety are engineering questions, of how to use a certain type of fuel. What can be said with almost certainty is that argia that was produced in this way was much cleaner than that produced from reactors since there were no fission products to be disposed of as in reactors. On the other hand, in another thought, the production of energy from the connection of matter and antimatter is through gamma radiation, and in order to confine the source of energy, a structure is needed so that radioactive products may have been formed in the building materials from the emission of the gammas, but it is assumed that their half-life was shorter so that they were less polluting. In terms of safety, I tend to support nuclear reactors where the technology and engineering have been known for decades, so the level of safety is high, there is no fear that all the fuel will burn at once, a malfunction that can be thought of in the production of energy from the connection of matter and antimatter.
to love
I have a question for someone who is not familiar with the material.
The reactions describe an idea of producing energy from antimatter.
Suppose we had a way to get our hands on a large amount of antimatter (even an infinite amount).
Is energy production from A.H. It was safer and more efficient than generating energy in nuclear reactors?
From the responses you can see a basic misunderstanding of the concept of antimatter. While antimatter can be thought of as a mirror image of matter, several basic laws of nature must be kept in mind. First of all, the fundamental laws of physics are the conservation of matter and energy, and it was Einstein who showed the equivalence between them. It is not possible to transform matter into anti-matter, not even quantumly, if it were possible to do so, we would break the law of conservation of energy, that is, we would have a "leading perfectum" and in addition, we would produce matter from nothing without an investment of energy, which clearly breaks the law of conservation of matter.
Second, there is no source of antimatter that needs to be discovered and antimatter must be produced. The production of antimatter requires energy and in principle operates in the opposite process from analysis, meaning that when antimatter is produced, matter is also produced. What happens to the law of conservation of matter in the universe? Well there is an equality between matter and energy and the production of the antimatter requires a lot of energy. So in total we lost energy and produced antimatter. As you can understand, there is no solution here for the energy problems that are troubling humanity.
If they somehow find a quantum way to turn matter into antimatter, we'll have unlimited free energy.
Antimatter is not a source of energy unless they find where to mine it
It is an important catalyst for countless processes.... Nuclear fusion with energy gain in a household generator is possible.
Interesting and very important research will pave the way for us to meet new worlds in the universe.
finally some updates on CERN
thought they went dark because a small black hole formed there and obliterated the place....
Itzik C:
Lots of energy. Lots and lots and lots. and-? The purpose of these experiments is not to create antimatter as an alternative energy source and your question has no meaning.
And how much energy did they invest in creating the same amount of antimatter from which a light bulb could be lit for a few minutes? The cooling of the conductors? particle acceleration?
Scarecrow,
Better to burn straw (forgive me) to boil water and build a steam engine. Saran's website states that from all the amount of antimatter that they ever managed to produce in Saran (if it were possible to concentrate it together) it would be possible to light a light bulb for a few minutes.
Joseph,
This is precisely the fundamental question of the masher that stands behind the tremendous scientific-technological achievement shown in Taba. Are matter and antimatter atoms equivalent to the point of charge coupling? According to the laws of nature known to us, there should be no differences in the energy levels of the atoms, and this is exactly what the scientists intend to test.
Great, now they can finally start building a matter/antimatter reactor and create a torsion engine!
To boldly go where no man has gone before
Or am I getting a little carried away?
Ghosts:
In the rest of the sentence it is written that they intend to harm using microwaves - that is - electromagnetic radiation - that is - photons.
How will they actually perform the measurement on the antiparticle, after all every particle that is created in order to perform the measurement is supposed to undergo inhalation with the antiparticle?
I didn't quite understand what was meant: "If you hit anti-hydrogen atoms..."
What do you "hurt" with? After all, the anti-hydrogen atom is supposed to go through an ionization process as soon as something "hits" it, right?
Thanks
My father, in the title: for 1000 seconds.
Joseph:
Yes. Every substance has its anti.
It is quite clear that it is difficult to understand the article if you do not understand the words of which it is composed.
That's why I suggest you read what It is written in Wikipedia about antimatter And only after that will you return to reading the article.
Important research, I believe it will open a new field of science to the world
The wording is somewhat vague. I did not understand anything.
What, for example, are the meanings of this? Or the applications?
It is not clear what anti-hydrogen is?
Each type of material has an anti? Is there anti-oxygen for example?
To point out that one of the main partners of the research from its inception is an Israeli scientist, Dr. Eli Sharid. Dr. Sherid has been a member of the Alpha Group since its inception. In addition, Prof. Lazar Freeland from the Hebrew University contributed a lot to the research, who proposed several theoretical ways to improve the confinement of the anti-hydrogen, suggestions that were used by the group and thanks to which the result reported in the article was achieved.
Important and good research. More the better.
for a place for example