Monday, 02 November 2009 08:55

Earlier this month the first particle streams were injected into CERN's Large Hadron Collider, so could these experiments produce enough anti-matter to make a bomb, as imagined by author Dan Brown in his novel Angels and Demons?  

Well, no.

The first problem with this scenario is that the Large Hadron Collider only produces a tiny, tiny amount of anti-matter. The first anti-hydrogen atoms were produced in 1995 by CERN's Low Energy Anti-Proton Ring. Further experiments in 2002 managed to create tens of thousands of anti-hydrogen atoms. This sounds like a lot, but it would still take several billion years to produce enough anti-hydrogen to fill even a small toy balloon. 

Transporting anti-matter also poses a problem. When an anti-particle comes into contact with its complementary normal particle, both are destroyed instantly. Charged anti-particles can be held in an electro-magnetic trap, but only up to a limit. Because similar charges repel, the anti-particles held in a trap push against one another, eventually overcoming the containing force of the magnetic trap. Neutral anti-particles - those with no charge - are even harder to contain! Electrical and magnetic traps have no effect on them, and although scientists are working on alternatives such as laser nets, no solutions exist yet. 

Finally, despite many science-fiction stories to the contrary, anti-matter is useless as an energy source and a bomb material, because it takes much, much, more energy to create than it produces. Anti-matter does not exist in nature, and only one-tenth of a billionth of the energy invested in creating it can be returned. 

So why are the scientists at CERN so busy making anti-matter? Well, it's already proving useful: PET scanners in hospitals use anti-electrons to see what is happening inside patients. But anti-matte's greatest value is its ability to tell us about the laws of nature, including the possibility of extra dimensions and the secrets of the universe. In the Big Bang, almost exactly equal amounts of matter and anti-matter were created and they annihilated each other – leaving a slight excess of matter! Something took place at this time that meant some matter remained (only one particle in every billion) to make up the universe we know. Scientists at CERN want to understand the differences that mean matter survived but anti-matter didn’t.

Related links

Angels and Demons (CERN)

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