RE: Antimatter: ISOLATED!
November 21, 2010 at 3:17 am
(This post was last modified: November 21, 2010 at 3:21 am by Anomalocaris.)
(November 18, 2010 at 9:43 am)The Skeptic Wrote: Angels and Demons wasn't THAT bad. The book was written badly but I found the movie enjoyable.
Anyway, the article says that they are only trapped for a tenth of a second. Do the antihydrogen atoms escape the magnetic field and annihilate with the hydrogen or do they decay into smaller particles?
I believe antihydrogen atoms would be stable until annihilation by contact with normal atoms, unless they happen to make antitritiums, which seem silly if all they are after is simplest antimatter they can make. In any case, tritium protons would remain antiprotons even after decay. I can't imagine why a containment that works for 1/10 of a second won't work for arbitrary length of time, unless something is heating the antihydrogen to the point where it would gain the kinetic energy to escape. More likely it was a demand to prove a concept that has been met in 0.1 seconds. It seems to me the only way they would know they trapped antimatter would be to break containment and watch for the annihilation.
