Big Bang News

According to Yahoo news, a big leap forward happened in science recently, in that scientists at CERN were able to create AND CONTROL an anti-matter atom for an appreciable period, purportedly long enough to perform qualitative analysis of the atom and its interaction with other forces. While it is possible that these recent published findings will go down the trail blazed by Pons and Fleischmann (google them), recent lab results are reported to include creation and substantial maintenance of a complete anti-hydrogen atom. This is a big step.

For those of you not of the science-fiction geek sect, anti-matter has been a favorite hypothetical sci-fi power source for years, particularly for things like interplanetary and/or interstellar travel. The theory is that when anti-matter comes into contact with "normal" matter, both are annihilated in toto, releasing energy on a scale offered by Einstein: The energy generated equals the mass of the matter consumed times the square of the speed of light. Since the speed of light is a really big number, this annihilation of matter results in a LOT of energy compared to the amount of material involved in the reaction. Hypothetically, only a relatively small amount of anti-matter would be enough to push an object from one star system to the next in a space of time measured in periods shorter than geological epochs. The starship Enterprise, for example, has at its heart a matter/anti-matter reactor, and even legitimate scientific theorists who posit ideas for travel between star systems (some of which are pretty interesting; google 'Alcubierre drive') generally concede that anti-matter is one of the few reactions known to man that would produce sufficient energy to reach the required velocities, and/or to generate the exotic matter/energy fields needed to simultaneously exploit and not fall victim to pesky little things like the gravimetric effects of relativity.

Here in the real universe (at least on this planet) anti-matter spent decades as a fantasy substance, where it was theorized to exist, but remained unobserved. Then it spent years at a hypothetical substance, as scientists were able to create anti-particles (anti-protons, anti-neutrons, etc.), but fell short of creating an actual atom. The first complete anti-hydrogen atoms were first created in 2002, but nobody could really be sure, since too short an interval existed between the creation of the anti-atom and its subsequent annihilation. While the energy levels in the observed reaction (i.e., the annihilation) supported that what was being generated was, in fact, anti-matter, nobody could trap the anti-atoms long enough to perform any detailed scientific analysis. That's the problem that's being worked on currently, with results being gotten. By freezing the anti-atom down to just half a degree above absolute zero (-272.5 degrees C), scientist have been able to create and trap complete anti-matter atoms for periods measured in actual seconds.

Rationally speaking, anti-matter as an energy source is horse-shit, and will remain so for at least a few more generations. Generating anti-matter takes vastly more energy than is released by the matter/anti-matter reaction that follows - notwithstanding the direct application of Einstein's matter/energy conversion rate - even before you consider the energy costs of cooling the anti-matter to near absolute zero to trap the atom. Barring some amazing breakthrough that makes the stuff easy to produce and store, we're going to keep burning oil for fuel. Hell, we can't even figure out a way to produce normal hydrogen cheaply and efficiently enough to use it as an energy source, much less anti-hydrogen.

But in theory at least, analyzing anti-matter will provide insight into the nature and properties of matter itself, in the literal sense. Meaning that science here on earth is seeking to explore the circumstances and context of how matter is actually created and/or destroyed. Did Ben Franklin know what he was getting us in to when he went and flew a kite in a thunderstorm? Who knows where this might lead us.