Antimatter has been transported for the first time (opens in new tab)

It would be trivial to reroute power from the secondary systems to the forward shields anyway

What is that in firecrackers?

Gemini says a firecracker releases 150 J, so yeah not a lot.

It was on the radio here (I live on its route)- the ‚receiving’ physicist said it would be way less than what we catch anyway from daily cosmic radiation.

Baby steps on our way to a Dan Brown scene lighting up the night sky

For 92 protons? So 3*10^-10 J per proton?

For a tiny number, that is still insanely high...

Yeah, it's really impressive to me that they can make antiparticles, put them in a container, count them, transport them and count them again.

Nonetheless, "moving antimatter by truck" is pretty SF. More grounded than epic space opera, but stillvery cool.

“I have had it with these anti-matter protons on this anti-matter truck!”

Or something.

Next milestone: put it in Warptruck™ as fuel

AI slop account

Much safer than Starfleet fuel tanks.

Surprisingly, teleportation is easier.

Totally sounded like Star Trek. LOL. I imagined Mr. Scott yelling something about the transporters not being able to lock onto the antimatter.

Had the same thought! haha

Was kind of disappointed to see it was transported via 18-wheeler.

Nope, it's pretty compact. The first image in CERN's photo gallery shows it being loaded into that truck: https://cds.cern.ch/record/2957407?ln=en

Of course, it's compact because it only has to last so long. CERN's press release discusses needing a generator and a cryocooler in the truck for longer trips: https://home.cern/news/press-release/experiments/base-experi...

This older article about the test they did with ordinary protons, indicates the outer frame measures "2.00 meters in length, 0.87 meters in width, and 1.85 meters in height" and comes in under 1000kg https://ep-news.web.cern.ch/content/cerns-base-step-leap-for...

There's a photo towards the end which shows the equipment in the truck, it seems to be about the size of a mini fridge or a half rack.

The charges are inverted, so anti-protons are actively attracted to protons.

It would immediately explode.

The confinement scheme used here is likely a Penning Trap. Such devices are limited in the amount of antimatter they can store by the Brillouin limit. The energy stored will be no more than the magnetic energy of the field of the trap, and so much less than the explosive yield of a mass of TNT (say) equal to the mass of the trap.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-neutral_plasma

From a layman's point of view, I'm more interested in antimatter's potential as a weapon.

Not necessarily because I want to use it, but because I have a vague idea of what it's capable of, and what that would mean in the hands of certain groups capable of producing it.

Very tough engineering problem. Amount transported is 92 atoms. A mole (1 gram) of anti-hydrogen is 6.23x10^23 atoms.

> ideal spacecraft fuel

If you're ok with the looming threat of total annihilation.

I suppose at least it will kill you faster than your neurons can communicate so you wouldn't even notice.

Not familiar with the subject so genuine question. HOW would antimatter be used as fuel? There is energy released in matter antimatter annihilation, but where would the force to move a spacecraft come from?

Black holes are good star ship engines because they turn everything into Hawking radiation.

I don't like antimatter because it's the most volatile fuel possible. If power is ever interrupted for any reason for any amount of time, the entire mass explodes.

A slightly less insane fuel source is a micro black hole. Drag a tiny black hole behind your ship and drip-feed it any kind of mass you come across. You still get >90% mass-energy efficiency which is far beyond anything else we know of.

Besides, one of the big problems with antimatter is that it's a battery, not a fuel source. We must first collect the unimaginable amount of energy and then process it into antimatter one particle at a time. If you build a ton of factories around a star you can get meaningful production. But a black hole drive can suck up interstellar gas or any asteroids you come across. Matter is easy to get. Don't ask where the micro black hole comes from.

I'm currently writing a review/analysis of this book, so this was certainly a funny story to run into.

The mention Dan Brown in the article! This book occupies a special place in my heart and I was glad to see it mentioned.

The more important question is not could we. it's should we

What's this link supposed to be? Returns 404 now.

I make a pasta/antipasta joke every time I'm at an italian resteraunt and no one ever laughs :(

One cannot image what would happen if antipasti and pasti collide!

It would develop into "regions" of space that are entirely matter and others that are entirely antimatter. The boundaries between them would glow as stray particles drift between the regions and are annihilated by contact with the opposing particles.

The fact that we don't see these glowing boundaries in space is evidence that there are not antimatter regions and that the visible universe is almost entirely composed of matter.

It would depend on how it's distributed. If it's very homogeneous, totally anihilated. If there are galaxies of matter and galaxies of antimatter, more or less like us with a bit more background radiation.

Very, very bright.

Annihilated.

Unless we'd be fighting literal alines in space, and need a weapon for them, I think this would be many many many orders of magnitude too expensive / tricky for earth use. We have plenty of non sci-fi big boom sticks already as it is...

The energy used in creating and containing this antimatter was many orders of magnitude greater than it would release on collision with matter.

The most expensive bomb ever.

You (briefly) have an antiproton in your possession around once a day, assuming you get an average amount of sunlight. Some days, you might even have two!

That's a contentious statement! We're not sure if they are or aren't.

More accurately: we aren't sure if antineutrinos are the same or different from neutrinos!

https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.02110

The disadvantages of water-based life.

No. That would have created a warp field around the container.

Yes, only anti-truckers can haul anti-matter since normal CDLs only let you transport ordinary matter. You have to be very careful not to let the anti-trucker go to a ordinary truck stop because things really go down if they run into a ordinary trucker.

Actually it should require an anti-license.

I'm glad we have an expert on Swiss commercial trucking regulations here.