Antimatter trapped for a record 16 minutes!

Articles about anti-matter are nothing new here I know, but the research is getting so advanced that it certainly has a wow factor built in now. Anti-matter.... a few billionths of a second after the big bang, theory has it that there was an equal amount of matter and anti-matter. Since matter and anti-matter can not exist in proximity, matter and anti-matter annihilated one another. Now the astute among us is asking uhh if that is so, how come I see a universe full of matter. Well it seems that the matter/antimatter conversion is not 100% efficient and all the mass we see now is a fraction less than 1% of what there was before the conversion. Wild huh? Physics says that there should be way more mass in the universe, now we think we know where it went..

Anyway, that just shows how unbelievably difficult it is to store antimatter. And to consider large amounts for a long time is surely something of science fiction. Not so says an article in Yahoo News sent in by Tim Sayell.

Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva say that they have been successful at trapping anti-hydrogen atoms for the unheard of time of 1000 seconds. Yes in the normal world that's a stunning 16 minutes and change! What is a bit weird is Cern scientists are not really "trapping" anti-hydrogen as "cooking" it. From the article:

• In the ALPHA project, the researchers captured anti-hydrogen by mixing anti-protons with positrons — anti-electrons — in a vacuum chamber, where they combine into anti-hydrogen atoms.
• The whole process occurred within a magnetic "bottle"

To detect what they have trapped, the scientists turn off the magnetic fields allowing the anti-hydrogen to interact with normal matter.

Cern scientists are not sitting on their laurels however. The problem with the present trap is that there is no way to interact with the anti-matter directly. They are hoping that by 2012 they will have a new trap built that will allow scientists to study the anti-matter directly with lasers to allow spectroscopic experiments on the anti-atoms.

read complete Yahoo article here

In time for XMAS - Earth's new warm cloak

Newly discovered, that is.

A team of scientists led by Charles “Rick” Chappell, research professor of physics and director of the Dyer Observatory at Vanderbilt University says their analysis of the measurements of five different satellites reveals the existence of the "warm plasma cloak", a hitherto unknown region of the magnetosphere, that invisible shield of magnetic fields and electrically charged particles that surround and protect Earth from the solar wind.

Published this fall in the space physics section of the Journal of Geophysical Research, Chappell's research reveals a “natural cycle of energization” that accelerates the low-energy ions originating from Earth’s atmosphere up to the higher energy levels characteristic of the different regions in the magnetosphere. This brought the existence of the new region into focus.

So what is it? Says the Vanderbilt news release: "The warm plasma cloak is a tenuous region that starts on the night side of the planet and wraps around the dayside but then gradually fades away on the afternoon side. As a result, it only reaches about three-quarters of the way around the planet.

"It is fed by low-energy charged particles that are lifted into space over Earth’s poles, carried behind the Earth in its magnetic tail but then jerked around 180 degrees by a kink in the magnetic fields that boosts the particles back toward Earth in a region called the plasma sheet."

By the way it wraps around Terra, should it be called a warm toga or a warm lungi or heavens - a warm diaper? - instead of a warm cloak?

Image: Rick Chappell, Vanderbilt University