4 ms·
If you could produce antineutrons, how would you contain them?
by hughes 8y ago
If you could produce antineutrons, how would you contain them?
- saagarjha 8y agoPlace your container in freefall and then watch the antimatter collide with the walls of your (shaped) container due to the attraction between the container and the antimatter?
- archgoon 8y agoA single neutrino passing through a light year of solid lead has only about a 50% chance of actually interacting with it. Also, you'll need the neutrinos to start out at rest; they tend to travel near the speed of light.
- saagarjha 8y agoI’m talking about neutrons, not neutrinos.
- archgoon 8y agoIn that case you'll only have to figure out how to cool the antineutrons down enough to ensure that they aren't colliding with the walls simply due to random thermal motion (remember, neutrons don't stick together on their own, so there's no vibrating bonds to dump potential energy into, all that thermal energy in 1.5kT will basically get dumped into kinetic energy, and they don't have much mass; at room tempature they're whizzing around at about 2 km/s). You'll also run into the issue that regular free neutrons (and also anti-neutrons) are stable for only 15 minutes, after which point they'll decay. Note you'll also need to cool them off in that 15 minutes too (though you might be able to be generate them in a way that they start off cool). So a fun problem that comes up is how long will it take for the neutrons to collide assuming they're only being accelerated by the mass of the container.
- erikpukinskis 8y agoMaybe if you couldn’t contain them you could focus them?