For the first time, Northwestern University physicists have coaxed a single positron — the antimatter counterpart of an electron — into an exquisitely controlled quantum state.
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!
“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.
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 = mc2 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.
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!
“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.
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!
Make the glass of anti water on the moon just in case heh.
Make that an anti-glass!
Shit. See, I already blew the moon up.
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 = mc2 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.
It’s been done, but not in the visible spectrum: https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/news/first-spectroscopic-measurement-anti-atom
You did not just write “LCD display”. Feel ashamed! >:V
Other display technologies can’t properly reflect the real level of awsomeness in what can be seen about that positron.
Even good old CRT would be cooler than LCD nowadays.
As long as it isn’t a liquid LCD display.
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If you love antimatter. eat banana. It contains traces of antimatter.
I know very little about this but you make me excited to know more. Thanks!