CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

The world's first matter-antimatter molecule
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070910/full/070910-5.html

To quote Bill Engvall:

"THIS! IS! SO! RIGH-TEOUS!"

Thank you, Technomancer!

Can warp drive now be far behind.Seriously if they have discovered/developed or whatever the first matter/antimatter molecule
then the realism of something like warp drive might not be a fantasy after all.As you remember it's a combination of matter/antimatter that
helps to create the field that makes warp possible.

Too bad antimatter is still worth like 200 billion USD per gram...

Gotta keep that stuff in something too.

Thats a good question actually... how ARE they containing this when they make it?

They aren't really. The molecule is in existance for magnitudes under a second before disappearing in a "flash of light." That flash of light is the energy released from the matter/antimatter pair annhiallating itself. But they still have the tools to see exactly what happened with the particles.

The real question is when someone will invent some Dilithium crystals so we can put this stuff to WORK

Seriously though once more it appears we have stepped beyond the bounds of science fiction.
Now when are the aliens landing?

O_o why are you guys so surprised, sheesh, this stuff has been around for quite some time, we've known about anti-matter since dirac first encountered negative probabilities in his eqn (named after him). Since then I've done problem in QM where we consider a hydrogen atom equivolent in anti-matter... But sorry guys, keep in mind that we're building may a few of these atoms at a time, but nothing close to the 10^23 we know and love from Avagrados number . Plus, it's only the equivalent to hydrogen (and not even an isotope at that) thus we still have a quite a LONG LONG LONG LOOOOONG ways till warp drive save some remarkable breakthroughs in science I don't see coming within my lifetime... without enhancements by computers from the law of accelerating returns .

-Pascal

Anti-matter's nothing new, although what makes this interesting is the hybrid nature of the molecule. Of course, the researchers themselves are more interested in the fundamental properties of the stuff, in part to understand why the universe ended up with matter instead of either anti-matter, or an exact balance. As the article says, the authors also want to see if they can use the stuff to make gamma-ray lasers.

All I really know about anti-matter is it's a rather bad idea to have an identical particles of matter and anti-matter in the same place where they can touch.Big KA-BOOM!

That's quite interesting. I wonder how long it'll take until they can actually put it to use.

Probably not for a long while.They have to learn how to keep it stable enough first before they can come up with more practical applications.

Stability may be difficult to achieve, although it may not have to last very long. I did some further reading, and it seems that the researchers hope to produce a Bose-Einstein condensate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose-einstein_condensate) of the substance in order to produce a lasing effect. If they can do this, then the positronium need only last for a short period and the subsequent annihilation will produce coherent gamma rays. This would only produce short bursts, but they will have a very high energy density.