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?
Strange Quark
Yora