For the first time, Northwestern University physicists have coaxed a single positron — the antimatter counterpart of an electron — into an exquisitely controlled quantum state.
  • mildseason@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    72·
    3 days ago

    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!

    • betanumerus@lemmy.caEnglish
      11·
      3 days ago

      “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.

      • mildseason@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        8·
        3 days ago

        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!

          • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            2·
            2 days ago

            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.

  • scarabic@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    How did they know at any given point that it was still there? Wouldn’t they have to interact with it to be sure, causing an explosion and annihilating it? The explosion would be incredibly small with just one particle. Is the lack of explosion their only evidence that they had contained it? I’m stumped as to what it actually means to have one particle like this. How can you even know what temperature it is without interacting with it? And how do you interact with it without destroying it?

      • scarabic@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        Yeah I’m sure the annihilation would be detectable. I’m asking if there’s any way short of that to detect the antimatter particle.

  • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    231·
    3 days ago

    I wonder what they called it,since they tamed it.

    I’m thinking Anton if it’s a boy particle, Antonia if it’s a girl, and Matty if it’s nonbinary.

    Perhaps Antti (Niemi) if it’s Finnish 🤷🏻

  • HairyHarry@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 day ago

    For someone knowing jack about this matter^huehue

    How big would be the “explosion” if it would touch matter?

    Edit: Thanks for all the explaining without ridiculing my absence of knowledge.

    • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
      6·
      3 days ago

      An electron meeting a positron will apparently release 1.022 MeV of energy. I’m no physicist but my understanding is that this isn’t huge (it converts to 1.637×10⁻¹³ Joules). For comparison, fission of a uranium-235 nucleus releases about 200 MeV.