Physicists working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, have succeeded in trapping antihydrogen – the antimatter equivalent of the hydrogen atom – a milestone that could soon lead to experiments on a form of matter that disappeared mysteriously shortly after the birth of the universe 14 billion years ago.
The first artificially produced low energy antihydrogen atoms – consisting of a positron, or antimatter electron, orbiting an antiproton nucleus – were created at CERN in 2002, but until now the atoms have struck normal matter and annihilated in a flash of gamma-rays within microseconds of creation.
The ALPHA (Antihydrogen Laser PHysics Apparatus) experiment, an international collaboration that includes physicists from the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), has now trapped 38 antihydrogen atoms, each for more than one-tenth of a second.
While the number and lifetime are insufficient to threaten the Vatican – in the 2000 novel and 2009 movie "Angels & Demons," a hidden vat of potentially explosive antihydrogen was buried under St. Peter's Basilica in Rome – it is a starting point for learning new physics, the researchers said.
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We are going to end up killing ourselves...just a matter of when and not if. Maybe an alien race will see our warp drive signature and befriend us before we kill ourselves.
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We are having a 6 week class entitled "God and the new physics" at our church and this very topic was just discussed this last sunday.
Actually, the implications are far less earth-shaking than they appear. There had been many mathmatical models that indicated these existed and have been accepted within the scientific community for some time. The difficulty has been the scientific process of verifying them through a repeated process with "sustained" results. This looks to be a big step in that direction.
I'm facinated by all this, though I do not have the mathmatical background to fully appreciate it. The week before we reviewed several mathmatical models for E8 Symmetry and it is astounding how balanced and cohesive the fabric of the universe is, yet on a razor's edge.
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