8 ms·
ALICE finds first ever evidence of the antimatter partner of hyperhelium-4
- isoprophlex 2y agoWow, fascinating. I had no idea these hypernuclei even existed! Interesting background read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypernucleus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypernucleus
- 3form 2y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_atom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_atom this is also a supplementary fun read. I find it interesting that you could come up with many such combinations, and then answer to "could it exist?" becomes "why, yes!" more often than I would expect.
- andreareina 2y agoEverything not forbidden is compulsory. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarian_principle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarian_principle
- amai 2y agoUnfortunately the lifetime of these hypernuclei is of the order of picoseconds. They will not revolutionize material sciences.
- automatic6131 2y agoMaterial sciences are generally electromagnetic effects only. I'd be surprised when nuclear changes alters chemistry or engineering in any way that has significance outside of nuclear reactors. Well, I suppose, radioactive decay is of negative use in chemistry and engineering.
- indoordin0saur 2y agoOne interesting counterexample to this is deuterium and water made from it. It is 11% denser than normal water, ice made from it sinks in normal water, it has a higher heat capacity, is more viscous and has a higher boiling point. It's also completely stable!
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoYou can also drink it, though not a good idea to have more than a few sips due to the extra weight and different reactivity. You might feel dizzy if you drank a few glasses worth and it replaced the ordinary water in your inner ear. Also, heavy water is typically slightly radioactive due to it usually containing tritiated water (T2O), though regular water can also contain that. Apparently, swapping 20% of your cells' water with heavy water is survivable, but if you try this, don't blame me if you go sterile (cell mitosis will likely be affected).
- amai 2y agoOf course you can find videos of people on YouTube who drink deuterium: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcO1yCAO-pI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcO1yCAO-pI
- automatic6131 2y agoWow that's pretty interesting. I'm least surprised that deuterated chemistry is what's first mentioned, and I'm sure that there are some other good stuff in the category. I bet heavy gasoline (lol) has a lower octane number, for example.
- westurner 2y agoDoes this actually prove that antimatter necessarily exists? Does this prove that antimatter is necessary for theories of gravity to concur with other observations? Do the observed properties of antimatter particles correspond with antimatter as the or a necessary nonuniform correction factor to theories of gravity?
- ranger207 2y agoAntimatter has been used in medical PET (positron emission tomography) scans since the 60s
- pvg 2y agoAntimatter detection is not the new thing here, being nearly a century old: https://timeline.web.cern.ch/carl-anderson-discovers-positron https://timeline.web.cern.ch/carl-anderson-discovers-positro...
- OscarCunningham 2y agoYou're confusing antimatter with dark matter.
- nsxwolf 2y agoWith a splash of antimass in that confusion too
- westurner 2y agoMy mistake, my mistake. It seems I had my Antimatter confused with mah Dark matter. Antimatter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter Dark matter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter Antimass: I and the Internet have never heard of antimass. Negative mass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_mass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_mass Dark energy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy Dark fluid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_fluid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_fluid : > Dark fluid goes beyond dark matter and dark energy in that it predicts a continuous range of attractive and repulsive qualities under various matter density cases. Indeed, special cases of various other gravitational theories are reproduced by dark fluid, e.g. inflation, quintessence, k-essence, f(R), Generalized Einstein-Aether f(K), MOND, TeVeS, BSTV, etc. Dark fluid theory also suggests new models, such as a certain f(K+R) model that suggests interesting corrections to MOND that depend on redshift and density
- nsxwolf 2y agoWhat is "hyperhelium"? Google only turns up things related to this article.
- Jabbles 2y ago2nd paragraph of TFA
- godelski 2y agoFor those that can’t RTFA, here’s the first sentence of the second paragraph > Hypernuclei are exotic nuclei formed by a mix of protons, neutrons and hyperons, the latter being unstable particles containing one or more quarks of the strange type.
- elashri 2y agoIt is an exotic nucleus composed of two protons, one neutron, and one lambda particle (which is a type of hyperon -fermions with three quarks- containing a strange quark). This configuration distinguishes it from regular helium-4, which consists solely of protons and neutrons. The inclusion of a lambda particle introduces "strangeness" into the nucleus, making it a hypernucleus [1]. PS: By exotic here it I use the term as used by particle physicists which just mean not your ordinary stuff discussed in the "popular" working groups. Not the linguistic meaning of the word exotic. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypernucleus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypernucleus
- bilsbie 2y agoWhat are the properties of this? Any cool applications?
- mrguyorama 2y agoIt decays in under a nanosecond. A reality of all exotic matter research is that it is exotic almost always because it cannot exist in a stable manner for longer than a second. The vast majority of applications, if any, will be extremely niche sensing applications. They are useful to further probe the edges of our knowledge of physics and look at the corner cases where our models give confused shrugs and odd answers. It's not going to power a warp drive.
- dhosek 2y agoI’ve always wondered whether the “missing” antimatter in the universe is simply too far away to see, past the light horizon. And then there’s the exotic theory that at the big bang, regular matter went one direction in time and antimatter the opposite direction.
- spullara 2y agothey certainly can't hang out together for very long :)
- BuyMyBitcoins 2y agoBut when they do get together, it’s a blast!
- ykonstant 2y agoIn the case of the CMB, a blast from the past.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- short_sells_poo 2y agoThe issue with the "past the observable universe horizon" is that it is an entirely untestable theory. It may be true, but it may as well be irrelevant because according to our understanding of the universe, we are never going to be affected by this fact (since it's in a part of the universe from which information may never reach us).
- kadoban 2y agoIt also answers not much, just changes the question. There's no known reason for all the matter to be over here, where we are, and all of the antimatter to be way over _there_ outside of the observable universe. If anything that seems much less likely than there just being other imbalances in which gets created (or which survives over time, etc.). The universe would have to have preferred absolute directions in which to throw different types of matter/antimatter? That'd be very strange indeed, based on what we know.
- floxy 2y agoOT, but does anyone have updates on potential for antihelium detection on the AMS aboard the ISS? Seems like they have a handful of detections, but aren't quite statistically good enough to be conclusive? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Magnetic_Spectrometer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Magnetic_Spectrometer
- cryptozeus 2y agoWow TIL two cool facts for antimatter use. Exploring the Universe’s Origins: The Big Bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter, yet our universe is predominantly matter. Studying antimatter helps scientists investigate this imbalance, shedding light on the fundamental laws of physics. Medical Applications: Antimatter plays a role in medical imaging techniques like Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans, which are used to detect conditions such as cancer.
- naveen99 2y agoIt doesn’t really help with the origin. If the universe is infinite, any possibility will happen in some part of the universe but not necessarily in the part accessible / visible to us. So our part of the universe could have antimatter or a different part could…
- K0balt 2y agoSo, are you saying that it might be possible that there are antigalaxies somewhere out there beyond the visible horizon in spacetime ? I mean, of course “possible” like flying elephants possible, but maybe theoretically predictable? Like maybe the matter went this way, and the antimatter went that way in spacetime? Or maybe all the antimatter went before the Big Bang and the matter went after? I mean that’s wild but it would fix the symmetry problem!
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoI'm an amateur at best but I've only recently realised the implications of the observable universe, that is, we only know of the existence / size of the universe in what we can see, and there may be (and correct me if I'm wrong) way more Stuff beyond this 'boundary' whose light hasn't / will never reach us.
- robotworgen1994 2y agoMy understanding is for the geometry of our observable universe to make sense, our actual entire universe must be substantially larger to account for the mass needed to make it so.
- Daniela4565 2y ago[flagged]
- amai 2y ago„Using a machine-learning technique that outperforms conventional hypernuclei search techniques, the ALICE researchers looked at the data for signals of hyperhydrogen-4, hyperhelium-4 and their antimatter partners.“ Which ML technique are they using? Could it be XGBoost, because I heard CERN is using it?
- amai 2y agoI found the link to the publication: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.17769 https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.17769 And in fact, they used XGBoost.
- znpy 2y agoReminded me of this weird but cool song: Large Hadron Rap - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM :) Oh god I just noticed it's from 16 years ago... I'm getting old
- gosub100 2y agoSurprised the rapper name lil Hadron isn't taken yet
- ChuckMcM 2y agoIt will be interesting to see if this work will help us understand why the universe isn't half anti-matter.