Scientists Discover Antimatter

[Karen]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/11/18/switzerland.cern.antimatter/index.html?hpt=Sbin

 

for those of you that have read angels and demons, you'll be familiar with the concept of antimatter. I have read the book, and I think it's amazing that scientists have actually captured the thing that made our universe. It amazes me, honestly. Not just that there is something so great out there, but also the people that have done all this hard work and the brilliant minds it must have taken to capture it at last.

 

Thoughts? I'm actually not really into science but Dan Brown is one of my favorite authors and I thought it was amazing that something that was mentioned in such detail in the book has actually been captured while all Brown did was hypothesize to the best of his knowledge. So cool!

[130671]

Very interesting. Great (and terrible) things often start very small. Makes you wonder what the world will look like in a hundred years.

[Antares]

Aaaaactually...

 

Antimatter was "discovered" quite some time ago (1928 in theory and 1932 in practice). Antimatter atoms, that is atoms made up of antimatter, were first seen at CERN in 1995. So the new discovery this article talks about is that recently the people at CERN managed to not only produce antimatter atoms, but also to keep them alive for more than the tenth of a second. This opens up possibilities to do some closer examinations, because previously, those atoms were so short-lived that you could do little more than detect the presence before they found a matter partner and were annihilated.

 

By the way, CERN has dedicated an entire section of their site to Angels & Demons and questions related to antimatter.

[yorkshire]

They have managed to trap just a handful of antihydrogen atoms, and only for fractions of a second, before they were annihilated. Nothing on the scale of Angels and Demons where they had fairly sizeable "blobs" of the stuff.

 

I think Dan Brown did a fair bit of research before he wrote the book, so he could come up with a plausible way of the antimatter being incorporated in to the story.

[I am Not Purple]

I'll only say that Star Trek used antimatter long before Dan Brown.

[Karen]

They have managed to trap just a handful of antihydrogen atoms, and only for fractions of a second, before they were annihilated. Nothing on the scale of Angels and Demons where they had fairly sizeable "blobs" of the stuff.

 

I think Dan Brown did a fair bit of research before he wrote the book, so he could come up with a plausible way of the antimatter being incorporated in to the story.

 

Oh, I have no doubt. Although it was only a little bit and for a very short period of time, it's a huge step in the scientific world. I think it's very exciting!

 

 

I'll only say that Star Trek used antimatter long before Dan Brown.

 

True facts.

[Danielle]

I think it's very exciting!

I agree, it might only be small but very significant, it will only lead to more and more discoveries - science and technology are developing at an incredible rate.

 

I don't claim to understand everything about it just yet but I am fascinated by this kind of thing, the discoveries we might make about our past, about how the earth and the universe came into being, and where it might lead us in the future.

[U K]

It's quite interesting indeed. I recently started reading Demons & Angels and to be honest, if I had the time I wouldn't even put the book down and I'd read it in one go.

[ckravitz]

That's amazing. What brilliant minds to be able to capture that.

 

Dan Brown is also one of my favorite authors. I read The Lost Symbol last year and I absolutely loved it. The movie comes out in 2012

[apporge]

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