Photo: scienceinschool.org
"It’s a wonderful idea." These are the words of Charles Horowitz, theoretical nuclear physicist at Indiana University Bloomington. He spoke them referring to the idea that popped into the heads of his colleagues over at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland.
An idea that would imply a van, a touch of antimatter, an open, albeit short, road and some insane guts.
According to Nature, the uncommon way to transport antimatter (we have no idea what the common way is) on the road is part of a project which began a month ago near Geneva, Switzerland. Scientists from the antiProton Unstable Matter Annihilation project (PUMA) will attempt to carry a cloud of antiprotons from the PUMA facility to a neighboring one, called ISOLDE.
The researchers will try and trap the cloud of antiprotons produced by PUMA inside magnetic and electric fields, creating a vacuumed container, or trap, as they call it. The container would then be loaded into a van and transported several hundred meters away to ISOLDE, where some fancy experiment will take place.
Even the guys at CERN are jittery about the whole deal, despite their reassurance that modern-day science has managed, to some degree, to manipulate antimatter. The biggest challenge, they say, will not be the trip itself, but developing the container capable of holding the antiprotons.
Luckily, the experiment is nowhere near around the corner. The task of creating a container that would hold some 1 billion antiprotons at only 4 degrees above absolute zero would take an estimated four years.
Should they manage to do it, they would give a new meaning to the idea of hazardous transport. Plans are to give access to the stuff including to scientists that are not involved directly with the study of anitmatter at the CERN complex, and the only way to do that is by shipping it to them in the said containers.
According to Nature, the uncommon way to transport antimatter (we have no idea what the common way is) on the road is part of a project which began a month ago near Geneva, Switzerland. Scientists from the antiProton Unstable Matter Annihilation project (PUMA) will attempt to carry a cloud of antiprotons from the PUMA facility to a neighboring one, called ISOLDE.
The researchers will try and trap the cloud of antiprotons produced by PUMA inside magnetic and electric fields, creating a vacuumed container, or trap, as they call it. The container would then be loaded into a van and transported several hundred meters away to ISOLDE, where some fancy experiment will take place.
Even the guys at CERN are jittery about the whole deal, despite their reassurance that modern-day science has managed, to some degree, to manipulate antimatter. The biggest challenge, they say, will not be the trip itself, but developing the container capable of holding the antiprotons.
Luckily, the experiment is nowhere near around the corner. The task of creating a container that would hold some 1 billion antiprotons at only 4 degrees above absolute zero would take an estimated four years.
Should they manage to do it, they would give a new meaning to the idea of hazardous transport. Plans are to give access to the stuff including to scientists that are not involved directly with the study of anitmatter at the CERN complex, and the only way to do that is by shipping it to them in the said containers.
Google News