I first learned about #antimatter from the classic #DoctorWho serial Planet of Evil, where the #FourthDoctor informed my childhood self that, "Antimatter in collision with matter causes radiation annihilation. A release of energy more powerful than nuclear fission!"
Now my office overlooks the Antimatter Factory at #CERN. Earlier this week, the BASE experiment moved antimatter for the first time ever in a special transportable ion trap.
@yora The tricky bit is the "antimatter in collision with matter causes annihilation" part.
Antiprotons are tiny but turns out that an antimatter trap is a giant supercooled box.
@strangequark Turns out the tracer for PET scans produces positrons as a decay product but isn't antimatter before it decays.
That obviously makes it a lot easier to transport than antiprotons coming out of of the antimatter generator.
But the more I think of it, the weirder it gets to think about a truck carrying a cargo of antimatter through town. 😄
@strangequark I wonder what the energy release of 92 proton-antiproton annihilation would be?
Would it produce an audible sound? Would it create a flash bright enough to see with the human eye?
@yora Exactly. PET scanners work because the radioactive isotope releases antiprotons that interact with the matter of your internal organs and annhilate some of the protons you are made from, releasing energy which is what the scanner detects and uses to build the image.
Catching those pesky antiprotons is not so easy as they will interact with any matter, like air molecules for example.
Strange Quark
Yora