For the first time, Northwestern University physicists have coaxed a single positron — the antimatter counterpart of an electron — into an exquisitely controlled quantum state.
  • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    171·
    10 hours 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 🤷🏻

  • mildseason@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    69·
    14 hours 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!

      • 42yeah@eviltoast.orgEnglish
        7·
        3 hours ago

        Don’t they annihilate each other when they encounter matter? How can a banana contain antimatter safely?

    • betanumerus@lemmy.caEnglish
      8·
      12 hours 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.

    • nomad@infosec.pubEnglish
      11·
      14 hours ago

      I always assume it’s the same reason why are have mostly right handed people. It’s just that the scales tipped at some point and it had to go down one way from that point.

      • Uli@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        3·
        6 hours ago

        I think the universe actually is perfectly balanced between antimatter and matter, but variation across space emerged as space expanded and our entire observable universe happens to be in a pocket where there was more matter than antimatter.

        • nomad@infosec.pubEnglish
          1·
          2 hours ago

          Sounds reasonable. Assuming matter and antimatter split into equal parts that would have to be the case. I’m not sure if annihilation is a perfect process. Assuming energy density creates separation of energy into matter and antimatter of equal parts and no sudden annihilation happens, that would most certainly result in such a conclusion.

      • mildseason@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        19·
        13 hours ago

        Yeah probably but the important bit is why!

        Good point about right handedness! That is actually quite fascinating as well because in most other primates it’s a 50/50 split.

        Turns out walking is probably the major factor and our brains created the split - link. Still more questions though lol

        • a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          4 hours ago

          I actually think I solved that one a long time ago. I want with right, it works. Left–feels weird. Not like a good sort of “someone else is doing it” feeling like if you sit on your hand until it goes numb sort of thing.

          But I digress. I think that mostly the survivors won the war regarding how to pleasure themselves and therefore have more of a reason to survive.

  • Iamsqueegee@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    191·
    15 hours ago

    If movies have taught me anything, that particle isn’t tame. It’s just waiting for it’s moment.

  • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
    5·
    15 hours ago

    Man the two things I would have liked from the article is how much total energy did this cost to do. Im guessing if it was up scaled it should not cost much more than doing a single particle although I guess more magnetic power do to gravity. Then also it does not say why it only lasted that long. Did they intentionally stop or did something stop working and a particle of regular matter managed to touch it.

    • mildseason@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      4·
      14 hours ago

      This is just a guess but i reckon they got the data they needed from the experiment so they chose to end it. This is one step in a larger body of work. One of the team members has measured the magnetic moment of the electron extremely precisely and wants to do the same with a positron. I believe this experiment was to show they can capture and manipulate a positron for an extended period of time. Now they can move on to the real measurements!

      • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        13 hours ago

        Im not so sure. creating antimatter is not trivial. if they could keep it contained indefinately at little cost it would be kept to use with other experiments. Maybe that is why its stopped. To be used with another experiment. I just would like to know why and what its final dispensation was.

        • mildseason@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          2·
          13 hours ago

          A positron gets created by radioactive decay. Certainly the process to make an appropriate isotope (Sodium 22) is not trivial but the creation anti-matter will just happen.

          Capturing it and storing it is the hard part which the team proved they can do. As they were working with a single positron and have developed the procedure for capturing one there is no reason to keep it for further experiments.

          • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
            3·
            13 hours ago

            so again. if the energy used to capture is trivial to the energy used to contain. I want to know that. What im really looking for is the practicality of long term storage.

            • mildseason@sopuli.xyzEnglish
              1·
              13 hours ago

              Ah sorry i get you! Yeah like how long could we go? Indefinitely?

              Looking at the photo the equipment does seem quite large, it takes up the whole room. Can say for sure they don’t have the funding to dedicate that much equipment to a static experiment.

              Do agree with you though. Would be interesting to see the numbers for long term storage.

              • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
                2·
                13 hours ago

                yeah and you might be on to something. they might already have ideas to reduce the size or complexity and might follow up using a different design. I have been involved in a lot of projects with a large and ugly prototype to prove some stuff and then greater effort is put into design once they know the idea works.

                • mildseason@sopuli.xyzEnglish
                  1·
                  13 hours ago

                  Aw yeah for sure they could make it more compact! Would love to see it. If we could actually make meaningful quantities of anti-matter. Could we use it for power? What would transport look like? Anti-matter is one of my favourite subjects lol

      • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
        11·
        12 hours ago

        that would be way to much. Data centers are huge and energy intensive. If this was using 3% of the power of a datacenter just to keep one antimatter particle isolated. ugh.

  • HairyHarry@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    15 hours ago

    For someone knowing jack about this matter^huehue

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

    • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
      10·
      15 hours 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.

        • Davel23@fedia.io
          6·
          9 hours ago

          There’s a medical test called a PET scan, with PET standing for Positron Emission Tomography. Yes, positron as in antimatter. How it works is the subject is injected with a radioactive substance that decays into antimatter. That antimatter reacts with the normal matter in the subject’s body releasing photons. Those photons are then observed by the scanner which builds up a useful picture from them.

          Now, I’m not sure how much antimatter is generated in the subject’s body, but it’s a hell of a lot more than a single positron. And it all annihilates within the subject who doesn’t notice a thing. So a single positron is not going to generate much of a bang.

  • BooBees@fedinsfw.appEnglish
    54·
    14 hours ago

    Scientists in 2026: “let’s see how long we can hold onto this extremely angry piece of energy that is absolutely incompatible with our known existence and stability by every metric up until now. It’s probably gonna work, it might not go boom.”