- CARDIFF -- Swiss-based scientists said Thursday that they had manufactured
anti-matter, one of the staple substances of science fiction, but in such
tiny amounts it would be of little use in powering a Star Trek spaceship.
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- The scientists at the European Particle
Physics Laboratory, on the Franco-Swiss border, have now set up the world's
first anti-matter factory, one of them, Professor Frank Close, told the
annual science festival in Wales.
-
- Nine atoms of anti-hydrogen were produced
just over a year ago. Now, the new factory will produce them at a rate
of more than 2,000 atoms per hour, Close said.
-
- But Trekkies hoping to see a real-life
starship reach warp speed on the anti-matter fuel will have to wait for
an awfully long time.
-
- "About 44 pounds of anti-matter
would be needed to power a spaceship," Close told a news conference.
-
- "Thousands of atoms an hour sounds
a lot, but kilograms of the stuff would be needed for an astrocruiser which
means making over a billion of them."
-
- CERN will attempt to compare anti-hydrogen
with hydrogen atoms to shed light on one of science's great mysteries.
-
- As any sci-fi buff will tell you, when
matter meets anti-matter, they annihilate each other in a flash. The scientific
consensus is that, when the universe was created, matter and anti-matter
emerged equally from the Big Bang. So why did the universe survive?
-
- One answer may be that matter and anti-matter
are not mirror images of each other, something the scientists hope to find
out by comparing anti-hydrogen atoms with hydrogen.
-
- If there is a difference, "that
itself would be a revolutionary discovery," Close said. "A lot
of the foundations of physics will fall."
-
- "There is no evidence of any anti-matter
in bulk anywhere in the universe now," Close said. "Anti-hydrogen
promises to be a tool of fantastic sensitivity for finding out whether
a world made of anti-matter would really be indistinguishable from its
own."
-
- The techniques for capturing anti-matter
in electrical and magnetic bottles or traps, ready for analysis, should
be in place by spring 1999, he said.
-
- But even if the project takes off, it
won't have much connection to Star Trek plots. "If ever a real Star
Trek with anti-matter engines comes to be, then this is where the technology
will have begun," Close said. "But no one in their wildest dreams
really imagines that this will come to be."
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