{"id":717,"date":"2006-10-16T11:58:03","date_gmt":"2006-10-16T11:58:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/16\/antimatter-chemstry-for-small\/"},"modified":"2006-10-16T11:58:03","modified_gmt":"2006-10-16T11:58:03","slug":"antimatter-chemstry-for-small","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/16\/antimatter-chemstry-for-small\/","title":{"rendered":"Antimatter Chemstry (For Small Values of Chemistry)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The AIP Physics News service last week highlighted a new result from the Athena collaboration at CERN with the headline “First Antimatter Chemistry”<\/a>. That conjures images of sticking anti-carbon atoms together to make anti-buckballs, but that’s not exactly what’s going on…<\/p>\n

The experiment in the case involves the interaction between anti-protons and molecular hydrogen ions. They slow and trap the anti-protons, and bring them into the same region with the H2<\/sub>+<\/sup> molecules, and a reaction occurs that pulls the molecule apart, producing a neutral hydrogen atom and something they’re calling “protonium,” a state with a proton and anti-proton bound together for a short time before they annihilate.<\/p>\n

Now, I suppose this is technically chemistry, in some sense, as it features the interaction of a molecular ion with an atomic ion (an anti-proton is one positron short of anti-hydrogen, after all), but I think that’s stretching things a little. When I think of chemistry, I think of the interaction of whole atoms and molecules, usually in large numbers. <\/p>\n

That’s nit-picking, though. It’s still pretty darn cool that they’re knocking anti-protons into other stuff– even though they’ve been manipulating anti-protons for decades, these experiments continue to have a faint whiff of SF about them, and that’s always fun, at least until Gregg Easterbrook reads about it, and starts nattering on about anti-matter weapons…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The AIP Physics News service last week highlighted a new result from the Athena collaboration at CERN with the headline “First Antimatter Chemistry”. That conjures images of sticking anti-carbon atoms together to make anti-buckballs, but that’s not exactly what’s going on… The experiment in the case involves the interaction between anti-protons and molecular hydrogen ions.… Continue reading Antimatter Chemstry (For Small Values of Chemistry)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-experiment","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}