Antimatter experiment produces first beam of antihydrogen
home.web.cern.ch
home.web.cern.ch
Curing cancer will revolutionize human health. If we could only cure cancer.
and so forth...
[0] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiproton_Decelerator#ATRAP
I don't see any obvious examples--does it help things like smaller fabrication for chips?
EDIT:
Folks, I'm not being a jerk here. For example, a lot of the engineering that went into missles and the space program (integrated circuits, GPS, etc.) has application elsewhere.
Fundamental science research into materials and electromagnetics has given us wifi, radio, and television. Research into x-rays and radioactivity gave us medical x-rays and radiotagging of isotopes for understanding reactions.
High-energy physics research seems to have no immediate or even long-term application beyond satisfying "How does this stuff hold together?"--my question about chip fabrication was specifically in regards to the idea that things like advanced lithography techniques probably are advanced by this research.
The parent made this claim:
High energy physics is one of the leading fields that drives scientific progress forward.
I am simply asking this assertion to be justified and elaborated upon for those of us unfamiliar with those impacts.
Edit: Or to be more direct, and therefore less helpful, "scientific progress" is not a measure of "things that are useful to me". Scientific progress can, and historically is, made when we expand our knowledge of the world, not exclusively when we find practical applications of that knowledge.
There's nothing wrong with that, but acting like it is generating ROI today--or has in the past--is disingenuous.
Without validating your assertions or disclaiming them properly you are perpetuating the sort of nastiness science is supposed to fix.
EDIT:
Your addition about "drive science forward" as opposed to "drive engineering forward" is a subtlety that is worth repeating.
Leading to more interesting questions is, in fact, a significant part of "driv[ing] science forward".
But let's look back at the 19th and 20th centuries to see what value fundamental physics research has had.
At the time research into electromagnetism was quite esoteric with little practical use. Yet, of course, it turned out to be hugely advantageous in many ways. Electric motors. Electric lighting and heating. Electric appliances in the home. Radio. RADAR. Television. Telephones. Etc. Electromagnetism defined the industrial advances of the 20th century and easily was responsible for literally quadrillions of dollars in economic value.
Later, advances in computational theory and especially quantum mechanics and condensed matter physics enabled the electronics and computational / digital communications revolutions which gave rise to the modern internet, smartphones, personal computers, and even high-efficiency/low-emission automobiles (through micro-computer based engine control). Those technologies have been responsible for easily tens of trillions of dollars of economic value (if not hundreds or more) and are utterly dependent on advancements in basic science which at the time had very little practical use. The laser, for example, was originally lampooned as a solution looking for a problem, though of course eventually it became an important component in the backbone of modern industry and commerce.
At the time absolutely none of these benefits of this research were obvious. And in many cases it took many decades up to a century or more for the benefits to be realized. But just look at the enormous RoI generated. Imagine someone in the early 20th century systematically campaigning against high-energy physics research because it had no immediate practical application. Imagine how many trillions upon trillions of modern economic activity would simply not exist today because of that short-sightedness.
I could enumerate all of the practical benefits of high-energy physics research over the last, say, 2 decades but that plays into the wrong game and misses the point. Ultimately we don't know what we are missing out on by not pursuing certain categories of knowledge. And occasionally pursuit of blue sky knowledge produces not just enormous levels of RoI but absolutely civilization defining levels of return. Thus we should pursue such research with a healthy level of investment regardless of the perceived short-term applications, because the benefits of hitting the jackpot are too great to sanely do anything else. It's possible that knowledge of the higgs-field will have no practical, economic impact on human civilizations, ever. But it's also possible that it could lead to quadrillions of dollars in economic value over the next several centuries, the only way we'll find out is if we acquire that knowledge.
Of what practical use is a newborn baby? -Benjamin Franklin
In theory, a black hole is also a 100%-efficient converter of matter into energy, via the Hawking radiation. A microscopic BH might radiate very large amounts of Hawking radiation. The bonus is that, unlike antimatter, you can make (or at least fatten up) a BH directly from ordinary matter, without spending energy as a prior step (anti-matter is energy storage, a black hole is an energy source - if you're willing to spend some dirt as "fuel").
Of course, the problem of storage is just as bad, if not worse.
On the other side, if it is too large, the energy output is miniscule.
Now imagine there are particle pairs that, when added together have zero mass, zero energy, zero ... These would pop into existence in pairs everywhere and be anihilated soon after. Same is true for triples, quadruplets, ... with different probabilities. Surprise : these particles "exist" (normally for very short times).
So particle a and particle b come into existence, both particles on a path that separates them from eachother. However, because opposite charges attract (and other effects related to other forces) they will fall back into eachother after a while, anihilating eachother and leaving nothing. These are generally referred to as "virtual" particles.
Except of course if something comes between them while flying on their path. This results in multiple effects, like the Casimir pressure, and hawking radiation.
The Casimir pressure is simpler. Suppose you have 2 straight plates, and you bring them close together. So close that these virtual particles have a good chance of impacting one but not the other. If the plates are metal, the particles will generally "merge" with it (like electrons). So a tiny percentage of the virtual particles between the plates become real.
This does not affect virtual particles that are not between the plates. So there is a clear differential between vacuum interactions outside of the plates and inside. This results in a massive pressure pushing the plates together, like removing gas particles in a container results in a pressure on the outside of the container (and, in an athmosphere of large molecules, if you move plates closer together than the size of the gas molecules, there will be a pressure that pushes the plates completely together).
Likewise, in black holes what comes between the particles is an event horizon. Event horizons "erase" quantum information, only the black hole as a whole has quantum information (the reason for is that black holes are physical, localized, manifestations of the end of time : they don't have an inside as far as anything outside the black hole can detect), no individual parts of a black hole have quantum state. So if an electron crosses the event horizon the charge of the entire black hole changes instantaneously, and the point charge of the electron disappears. That means the charge pulling the particles back together (assuming an e+ and e- virtual particle pair) becomes much more distant to the particle, and if it has enough speed and a convenient direction it will fly away from the black hole. Due to conservation laws the net result is that the black hole has eaten a somehow negative-mass charged particle, and the mass has decreased. A particle has been created outside of the black hole and is flying away to infinity.
The vast majority of these particles are photons of a specific frequency, and, surprisingly, the smaller the black hole, the larger the effect (and the higher the frequencies). So spaceships would have to carry "heavy" black holes to get a decent output and would have to "feed" the black holes to avoid exploding (millions of tonnes as least, and you have to shovel in matter at a rate of 10+ kg per second to keep it stable. Or you could reflect hawking radiation back in). And of course, large black holes have large inertia (plus : how do you hold on to one ? Electrical fields can do it, but it would have to be a field so huge it baffles the imagination ...).
A 1kg black hole would be converted into energy in less than a planck second by this effect and there is nothing, even theoretically, that can hold back that energy. Such an explosion might even do what people were "afraid" would happen with CERN's Higgs experiments and disrupt the Higgs field, causing a cascading conversion of the energy "powering" inertia into photons (the higgs field is something like a magnetic field that opposes all velocity changes in mass). If this were to happen, it would look one hell of a lot like a big bang.
Virtual pairs appear and disappear all the time. They are like water boiling in a pot making foam; there are virtual "bubbles" everywhere around you. As long as they disappear back into nothingness, everything about them is virtual.
It's only that the event horizon throws a snag into the mechanism, and swallows up one of the particles, thereby preventing recombination. The only way for that to happen is that if the other particle gets promoted from virtual to real. The only way that could happen is if the black hole itself provides the required energy to make that particle real.
Again, the BH does not pick "positive" vs "negative" mass. It just swallows up one random member of a virtual pair. The other member, left alone, cannot recombine; it sucks up some energy from the BH's gravitational field and becomes a real particle, with positive energy and mass.
To sum it up, it's the virtual pair "foam" that slowly sucks up energy from the BH.
PS: Sorry if some of my questions are super dumb. Advanced Phy really is NOT my field
In relativity theory it is actually more complex than that. Think about what an outsider (like the particle that's about to become hawking radiation) sees when you fall into a black hole. Because space itself is falling into the black hole, it takes ever longer for light to cross the distance between you and the observer. So as you approach the event horizon, first, you appear to slow down. Now this slowdown will also produce a fading effect, and a redshift. The fading effect is what's important. Whatever process produces the light travelling from you to the observer will itself slow down, so the number of photons transmitted will decrease as you approach the event horizon. Then, at the crossing point, the time for any photon to reach the observer becomes infinite, which means the photon will never be received by the observer. So what happens to an electron is the same. As it approaches the event horizon, the magnetic field of the particle fades, and the field of the black hole itself strengthens at the same time. When the particle hits the event horizon, it's field is gone.
This is why one might refer to a black hole as a location where time ends.
You should not think of matter falling into a black hole as getting consumed. There is a difference of perspectives here. What's described above this line is what one sees if observing from a comfortable distance away from the black hole. For the person falling inside of the black hole, assuming the black hole is sufficiently large, nothing extraordinary would happen. The only real phenomenon you'd see is that the distance between you and any object (not just the ones outside of the black hole) would get larger by itself. Including the distance between you and the black hole itself.
An intriguing observation you can make is that if you look at galaxies' movements from earth, what do you see ? Well, the distances between all of them are getting bigger in all directions. Suppose you place dots on a balloon, then inflate it, the distance between all the dots increases. The same is happening in 3 dimensions to galaxies. And, guess what, the edge of the universe (as measured as being "just behind" the farthest object we can see, or alternatively where the redshift would turn infinite) is exactly where you'd expect to find an event horizon (we only have accuracy for that of half a billion light years, but still, pretty big coincidence). Do we exist inside a black hole ?
Since we have never seen negative mass particles, we don't actually know whether they exist or whether gravity attracts or repulses them. While it is true that electromagnetism can both attract and repulse, that is not a given for fundamental forces. The strong force only attracts, no matter the charges or any other property of the particles involved. Since we don't have a theory that has both gravity and the other forces we can't calculate this. Since we don't have any test material we can't simply test it out. Einstein's theories claim that gravity always attracts, even particles with negative masses. Now this theory doesn't have a good basis for that claim as it doesn't have negative mass particles, but historically it has been a mistake to bet against it.
We also don't know why there is an imbalance of "negative" mass virtual particles into the black hole. The reason black holes lose mass in this process is simply because of conservation laws. You'd expect 50-50 chances of losing mass but that doesn't happen in practice. Why ? No idea. Some explanations include that particles inside the black hole don't have to follow conservation laws, only the black hole itself and anything outside of it. This would mean that inside the black hole another hawking radiation particle came into existence, with positive mass and everything. Since this can never affect anything outside, this does not actually violate any laws of physics. It is a bit of a moot point though, like asking what happens to a number after it's been divided by zero. There is no answer, anything can happen.
Let's say you get a positron/electron emission, and happen to capture the electron. Won't that free positron eventually annihilate a "real" electron, resulting in the same net effect? You still aren't creating anything long-term.
>Event horizons "erase" quantum information
I was under the impression that this was theorized to not really be the case. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox . There are a number of proposed solution that involve the black hole not destroying quantum information.
>the reason for is that black holes are physical, localized, manifestations of the end of time
What does this statement mean?
>So spaceships would have to carry "heavy" black holes to get a decent output and would have to "feed" the black holes to avoid exploding
What causes the black holes to explode? By "explode", do you mean they emit hawking radiation so fast that they decay quickly? If not, why are large black holes stable?
>So spaceships would have to carry "heavy" black holes to get a decent output
Didn't you say the effect was more significant with small ones?
Thanks for the explanation. Hopefully you wouldn't mind helping me clear up my confusion.
My question is, how long before we can build an accelerator that deliberately aims at creating black holes, so we can understand the Quantum effects? (In space hopefully).
>A black hole that would survive the entire trip would have a radius of 0.9 attometers, would have a mass of 606,000 tonnes, and a power output of 160 petawatts. The lifespan of the black hole could be extended by feeding it mass, too.
http://io9.com/5391989/a-black-hole-engine-that-could-power-...
So, if we had enough energy to make these antimatter, we could simply use the energy directly, without going through the massively inefficient step of funneling that energy into liquid helium and superconducting magnets and city-wide vacuum circles and so on.
>most efficient ways to store energy
> ...a way to cheaply produce it without relying on fossil fuels.
It sounds like regarding antimatter as a possible alternative to fossil fuels---which it can't be. (It can be an alternative to oil tankers, I guess.)
"With a set of four machines: black hole generator, black hole drive, power plant, and a self perpetuating black hole powered black hole generator, the potential is enormous. "
[0]http://io9.com/5391989/a-black-hole-engine-that-could-power-...
Antimatter is certainly the densest way we know to store energy, which is great when it works. But unfortunately, it's also the densest way we know to store energy. Which is not so great when it explodes.
Add, too, that the acronyms are excellent.
The numbers make the problem clear. In 2007, the year before CERN first powered up the LHC, the lab produced 142 master's and Ph.D. theses, according to the lab's document server. Last year it produced 327. (Fermilab chipped in 54.) That abundance seems unlikely to vanish anytime soon, as last year ATLAS had 1000 grad students and CMS had 900.
In contrast, the INSPIRE Web site, a database for particle physics, currently lists 124 postdocs worldwide in experimental high-energy physics, the sort of work LHC grads have trained for.
Let's not confuse students and fellows with missing staff. [...] Potential missing staff in some areas is a separate issue, and educational programmes are not designed to make up for it. On-the-job learning and training are not separated but dynamically linked together, benefiting to both parties. In my three years of operation, I have unfortunately witnessed cases where CERN duties and educational training became contradictory and even conflicting.
http://ombuds.web.cern.ch/blog/2013/06/lets-not-confuse-stud...
An unsatisfactory contract policy
This will be difficult for LD staff to cope with. Indeed, even while giving complete satisfaction, they have no forward vision about the possibility of pursuing a career
http://staff-association.web.cern.ch/content/unsatisfactory-...
Pensions which will be applicable to new recruits as of 1 January 2012; the Management and CERN Council adopted without any concertation and decided in June 2011 to adopt very unfavourable mesures for new recruits.
http://www.gac-epa.org/History/Bulletins/42-2012-04/Bulletin...
And a warning to non-western members:
"The cost [...] has been evaluated, taking into account realistic labor prices in different countries. The total cost is X (with a western equivalent value of Y) [where Y>X]
source: LHCb calorimeters : Technical Design Report
ISBN: 9290831693 cdsweb.cern.ch/record/494264
Second, they were able to produce 25 anti-Hydrogen atoms per hour. They measured total 80 of those. A long way from anti-matter weapons :).
It's important to keep an understanding of the scales involved here. A gram of Hydrogen contains 6e26 atoms. So a nanogram of material contains on the order of 10^17 atoms. That's ten million trillion atoms.
A "beam of antimatter" which literally annihilates the walls of the vacuum chamber it is contained within may seem dramatic but in this case we are talking about mere dozens of anti-atoms. Against walls of solid metal the damage is so minute as to be undetectable with even the finest instruments. Even if the beam were far, far stronger it would still only cause erosion at the scale of picograms per trillion anti-atoms, which isn't much concern.
In terms of intensity you are absolutely correct though.