• betanumerus@lemmy.ca
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    15 days ago

    “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.

    • mildseason@sopuli.xyz
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      15 days ago

      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!

        • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          14 days ago

          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.