Right - so anti-proton impregnated fullerene matrixes are a go, then.
Don’t add any acid
Si
Right - so anti-proton impregnated fullerene matrixes are a go, then.
Don’t add any acid
Si
Does anyone have a cite for images produced by Cecil Powell?
I had never seen these before. Quite superb. I really had to stop myself from laughing out loud at work. The British sense of humour at its dryly absurd best. Many subtle details. They must have had a lot of fun.
Thanks for the answers: I suspected it would occur there because there’s no direct mentioning of mixing anti-hydrogen with water… but how about this:
I take 3 anti-hydrogen atoms and have them react with lead (atomic number 82)… if all the reactions occurred completely will the lead turn into gold (atomic number 79)…
I tried looking up “antimatter alchemy” and I get nowhere.
Any answers for me?
–Ray
Another question (thanks for answers!!!) If Sodium-23 produces positrons, why can’t we just mix it with hydrogen and use it for an anti-matter rocket?
I just did a back of the envelope calculation. It’s sodium 22, not sodium 23, and it has a half life of 2.6 years. That means that in 22g of the stuff, half of its 6.022*10^23 atoms emit a positron in 2.6 years. Converting this to watts gives 13 kW / kg of sodium 22. Not bad, but nowhere near enough to launch a rocket; for 1 kg of the stuff, we get about 18 horsepower.
(Here is the wolfram alpha calculation I did, perhaps you can find a mistake, I’m a big hung over).
Yes if all the reactions occurred completely (pretty difficult in practice), it would turn lead to gold. “Antimatter alchemy” is a real thing, happening at particle accelerators across the world as we speak. There wouldn’t be much point in trying to use it to make gold though, because it costs way more to operate the experiment than the worth of the teeny-tiny amounts of gold that can be produced.
Awesome, thanks for the verification on that! I’m writing a science fiction novella / screenplay that I thought of in 1987 but didn’t do much with it due to the lack of a “doomsday” scenario that involved the moon… anyway, I’m thinking this: yes, creating gold for financial gain in this process would be a pointless money-pit…
Nice answer, thanks! It makes sense to me now: I found a good article that said something along the lines of positron annihilation is relatively weak compared to other antimatter / matter reactions.
The problem is just that electrons are light (less than a thousandth the mass of a proton). If you want to produce a lot of energy by annihilating things, you do a lot better if you can annihilate entire atoms rather than just electrons.
I am having a blast, learning stuff about physics… I see now the particulars: heavier elements, which have more protons and neutrons will produce the greatest explosions… I also found out we have just recently created anti-helium… so I am 'wow, this stuff is truly expensive!" We also recently determined that solar flares produce antimatter and even sorts it out from normal matter, but it is still short lived-- harnessing that is beyond our tech… Thanks for the input, I really appreciate it!