There’s a factory in Europe that makes antimatter! It’s the rarest, most expensive, and potentially the most dangerous material on earth. Scientists don’t know why this material is so rare. Anti-atoms took 72 years after we discovered antimatter to make. Why?
Thanks to CERN, Elise Wursten, Loïc Bommersbach and Sarah Charley
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Sources:
Current estimate of Antimatter, courtesy of Elise:
Stefan Ulmer made a back-of-the-envelope calculation based on energy and power consumption. The explanation goes as follows:
1. CERN produces 3e7 antiprotons per AD cycle or about 1e15 per year
2. This is about 1e15*1.67e-27kg = 1.67 nanogram per year
3. 1 gram of antiprotons has an energy (E=mc^2) of 9e13 Joule
4. The efficiency of the antiproton production process is 1e-9, so you need a billion times more energy: 9e22 Joule
5. The cost of power for CERN is 1kWh = 3.6e6 Joule = 0.1 euro
6. So that would make 0.1/3.6e6*9e22 = 2.5e15 euro
7. And it would take CERN 6e8 years
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19990110316.pdf (1999)
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ – you can see the nuke city
Mass of Fish: “Contribution of Fish to the Marine Inorganic Carbon Cycle” http://rsmas.miami.edu/groups/grosell/PDFs/2009%20Wilson%20et%20al.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20120105085146/http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/spotlight/SpotlightAandD-en.html
Dirac’s attitude about the positive solution to his equation https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17111-how-dirac-predicted-antimatter/
Dave’s Essay: http://multimidia.ufrgs.br/conteudo/frontdaciencia/dirac%20antimatter%20paper.pdf
Questions at CERN
https://public-archive.web.cern.ch/en/LHC/WhyLHC-en.html
Creating Antihidrogen:
https://home.cern/science/physics/antimatter/storing-antihydrogen
https://public-archive.web.cern.ch/en/LHC/WhyLHC-en.html