how did this get past the ethics committee
Won’t somebody please think of the
childrenantimatter?!antichildren*
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!
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.
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
TIL. Thanks!
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.
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.
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.
If you love antimatter. eat banana. It contains traces of antimatter.
The problem is it also contains a non-insignificant quantity of banana.
Don’t they annihilate each other when they encounter matter? How can a banana contain antimatter safely?
They do, and it can’t. It’s getting annihilated the first time it touches normal matter, producing other radiation. Nuclear decay in the banana produces more antimatter.
That’s a good idea for Star Trek. They allready had the mushroom powered warpdrive. So a starship powered by bananas isn’t that far fetched.
Bananas always get the hype for being particularly rich in potassium-40, which is the unstable isotope, but Brazil nuts have far more, and potato and carrot are about as radioactive as banana.
But can you use a potato for scale?
No, potatoes are for taking pictures
“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.
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!
Make the glass of anti water on the moon just in case heh.
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Shit. See, I already blew the moon up.
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.
It’s been done, but not in the visible spectrum: https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/news/first-spectroscopic-measurement-anti-atom
You did not just write “LCD display”. Feel ashamed! >:V
As long as it isn’t a liquid LCD display.
or an automated atm machine
Or a digital DSL line.
Other display technologies can’t properly reflect the real level of awsomeness in what can be seen about that positron.
Even good old CRT would be cooler than LCD nowadays.
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I know very little about this but you make me excited to know more. Thanks!
Poor particle did nothing bad
This is anti-electron astroturfing right here, verging on hate speech.
Everyone calm down. There’s enough love in the world for all the different types of particles.
Oh, and I suppose you want the electrons and positrons to just hug it out?!
🤣
It doesn’t matter
No Bad Particles: Physics the Woodhouse Way.
Not gonna be impressed until they teach it to fetch.
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 🤷🏻
How do you determine it’s gender? The spin? Electrical charge? Quark makeup?
How do you determine it’s gender?
VERY carefully.
Gender reveal particle.
If movies have taught me anything, that particle isn’t tame. It’s just waiting for it’s moment.
Pluribus moment where it’s playing dead ಠ_ಠ
Antimatter matters!
I wonder if it likes one scientist over another scientist
So it’s potty trained and can do tricks now?
Your move antimatter
Did they ask for consent?
someone has to draw that particle on a leash, all tied up, gagged, cumming hard
I gotchu, fam
I can, but I don’t want to do that
$200 says you do (nr)
with puppy ears
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.”
-“Free Anti Matt Er!”
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.
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.
ELI5
A zap like a fly in an electrical flytrap or more like a small firecracker?
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.
you wouldn’t feel it
you’d need several dozen, maybe a hundred uranium nuclei doing fission at once to knock over a coarse grain of sand.
a single particle almost nothing. if it was a gram though it would be bad.
A TOS Star Trek novel opens up with a terrorist who detonates a gram of antimatter in a box he’s holding (just turns off the power holding it). The city-sized colony was gone.
yeah its some multiples of hiroshima.
Or good. We all love big booms! Especially if they are done for science!
very smol.
