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>>"The long term storage of significant amounts of antihydrogen should soon settle the question of whether antimatter falls up or down." Would this mean that i
by Femur 15y ago
>>"The long term storage of significant amounts of antihydrogen should soon settle the question of whether antimatter falls up or down."
Would this mean that if I am "holding onto" a chunk of antimatter heaver than myself I will fall up into space?
- pavel_lishin 15y agoWell, technically, it wouldn't be possible for a chunk of antimatter to be heavier than you. But yeah, one theory is that if you hold one that's more massive than you are, its repulsion would overpower your attraction, and bang, zoom, straight to the moon!
- hippich 15y agoit should be repelled by moon's gravity back to earth - recursion... =))
- StavrosK 15y agoNot unless it's in a tube, and it would quickly reach an equilibrium anyway.
- oewolf 15y agoUnless he starts using his legs for extra propulsion!
- StavrosK 15y agoIn a vacuum?
- enko 15y agoCould be against the sides of the tube..
- StavrosK 15y agoWell played, sir.
- burgerbrain 15y agoSurely there is a reason NASA trains underwater. ;)
- burgerbrain 15y agohttps://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Lagrangian_point#L1 https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Lagrangian_po...
- jwuphysics 15y agoIf you were holding onto a chunk of antimatter you would probably be missing a hand.
- swombat 15y ago1 megaton nuke is about 4000 TeraJoules of energy. 10g of antimatter yields about 10^15 Joules - i.e. 1 PetaJoule, or the equivalent of a 2+ Megaton nuke. If you were holding onto a chunk of antimatter large enough to hold onto you'd be missing half of London.
- Killah911 15y agoNot sure if that conclusion is right. It probably wouldn't result in an explosion and the energy output would probably be in the form of light. Regardless, I'm going with Stephen Hawking on this one: "If you ever meet your anti-self, don't shake hands!"
- burgerbrain 15y ago"It probably wouldn't result in an explosion and the energy output would probably be in the form of light." That's what nukes do too. Turns out that dumping absurd amounts of light (various parts of the spectrum, but certainly including visible) into the surrounding area absurdly fast tends to fuck stuff up pretty good.
- lutorm 15y agoYeah, a lot of the power output from a nuclear explosion is in gamma rays, and even air is opaque enough to gamma rays that the energy deposition heats it up to way incandescent temperatures. That's what the fireball of a nuclear explosion is: incandescent air.
- swombat 15y agoFunny that I actually managed to get the maths wrong. 4000 TeraJoules is 4 PetaJoules, i.e. 10g of antimatter is actually a 0.25 Megaton nuke. Still packs some serious punch, but I totally fail at arithmetic, it seems.