What happened to antimatter? - Rolf Landua

Me and Rolf Landua holding the antimatter container of DaVinci's Code

Do you remember the antimatter bomb in the DaVinci's Code movie?

In my journey at CERN, Rolf Landua gave a lecture about antimatter. Basically the topics in the lecture was this questions: What is it? Where is it create? How can be created? What is the mystery behind it? How can we study it? Can we use it as a energy font or a bomb? Is any antimatter in our daylife?

In particle physics, antimatter is material composed of antiparticles, which have the same mass as particles of ordinary matter but have opposite charge and quantum spin. Antiparticles bind with each other to form antimatter in the same way that normal particles bind to form normal matter. For example, a positron (the antiparticle of the electron, with symbol e+) and an antiproton (symbol p) can form an antihydrogen atom. Furthermore, mixing matter and antimatter can lead to the annihilation of both, in the same way that mixing antiparticles and particles does, thus giving rise to high-energy photons (gamma rays) or other particle–antiparticle pairs. The end result of antimatter meeting matter is a release of energy proportional to the mass as the mass-energy equivalence equation, E=mc² shows.

At this time, the apparent asymmetry of matter and antimatter in the visible universe is one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics.

Antimatter is created in the LHC, and the LHCb is the detector responsible to detect particles in the antiprotons' collisions. The antiprotons' production is achieved with the collisions between protons and nucleus of Iridium, Cupper, and others. The antiprotons are decelerated and keep trapped with a combination of electric and magnetic fields (so it doesn't touch matter). In this way, the resultant material is detected by the detector before the annihilation. That event is one of the biggest mysteries of the Big Bang, and scientist are trying to answer it: the domination of the matter over the antimatter.

FDG is a glucose molecule, with fluorine-18 attached

This antimatter cannot be used as energy or weapon because we need energy to create it. Imagine that we want to produce 0.5 g of antimatter. Well, we need 22 kton (22,000 ton) of TNT (almost the same value of the Hiroshima's bomb), to produce 0.5 g of matter and antimatter. The energy in this process is about 4.5 x 10¹³ J. The total energy that we need (because the efficiency is 10^-9 %) will be 4,5 x 10²² J. Even with CERN's discount made by French Electric Company [1 kwh = 3,6 x 10⁶ J= 0,1 €], the total cost will be 1 x 10⁸ € and it will be take a billion years to produce and supply this production to CERN.

But, antimatter is used in our body for PET scan detection. The glucose has a fluorine-18 attached that will emit positrons when that molecule travels in our body, and the scanner detects where the positrons go.

The next step that scientist at CERN are trying to develop is to use positrons and antiprotons as therapy in some deceases.

References:

• Antimatter - Wikipedia
• Having a Pet Scan
• Antimatter presentation - Rolf Landua, CERN

CMS gaves a lot of particle collision data

Credit: CERN

"Datasets are the currency of physics. As data accumulate, measurement uncertainty ranges shrink, increasing the potential for discoveries and making non-observations more stringent, with more far-reaching consequences. In collider experiments, the amount of data is measured by the total number of collisions observed and the rate of those collisions, called the luminosity. In 2011, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) produced more collisions than scientists dared to expect, breaking the world record luminosity in April and then continuing to grow seven-fold. By the end of the proton collision run in November, 240 million protons were colliding each second."

in PhysOrg

CMS Particle Detector
The LHC smashes groups of protons together and very close to the speed of light: 40 million times per second and with seven times the energy of the most powerful accelerators. When the collisions happens some of its energy is turned into mass and previously unobserved, short-lived particles – which could give clues about how Nature behaves at a fundamental level - fly out and into the detector.


The Physics Results
All the Physics results can be found here.

CMS is a general-purpose experiment with sub-groups producing results for many different topics including:

• QCD Physics
• Forward Physics
• B Physics and Quarkonia
• Electroweak Physics
• Top Physics
• Higgs Physics
• Supersymmetry
• Exotica
• Heavy Ions Physics

font: http://cms.web.cern.ch

Watch the Photobook 2008:

Open publication - Free publishing - More detector

Magnetic properties of proton directly observed

Magnetic properties of a single proton directly observed for the first time
German researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM), together with their colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg and the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, have observed spin quantum-jumps with a single trapped proton for the first time. The fact that they have managed to procure this elusive data means that they have overtaken their research competitors at the elite Harvard University and are now the global leaders in this field.
font: PhysOrg

LHC

LHC

LHC First Beam on 10 September 2008

Primeira experiência do LHC

Geneva, 10 de Setembro de 2008. O primeiro teste com um feixe de milhões de protões no acelerador LHC (Large Hadron Collider) do Laboratório Europeu de Física de Partículas (CERN) foi bem sucedido, percorrendo os 27 quilómetros às 10h28min desta manhã. Este evento histórico marca um momento chave na transição, com mais de duas décadas de preparação, para uma nova era de descobertas científicas.

Para saber mais visite:

http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2008/PR08.08E.html

http://public.web.cern.ch

First beam in the LHC - accelerating science

Geneva, 10 September 2008. The first beam test, with millions of protons, in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN was successfully. The beam covered a distance around the full 27 kilometres at 10h28 this morning. This historic event marks a key moment in the transition to a new era of scientific discovery.

(in CERN)