Scientists transported 92 antiprotons on a truck for the first time yesterday. The half-hour drive rehearses a process needed to move antimatter on an eight-hour drive from Geneva, Switzerland, to Düsseldorf, Germany.
Antimatter, including antiprotons, is the oppositely charged version of normal matter. It is extremely rare in the universe, and is produced at Geneva’s European Organization for Nuclear Research. (The facility can produce 400 million antiprotons per hour). If antimatter and matter come into contact, they annihilate each other, releasing significantly more energy than nuclear reactions. To avoid that, antiprotons were surrounded by a vacuumed box with magnets cooled to -452 degrees Fahrenheit.
If anyone has ever had PET scan you’ve had a type of antimatter in you brain. This type of scan uses Positrons. Producing antiprotons is decidedly more awesome.
it-aint-over on
Can we move some to Washington DC in the vague hope some get released ?
Thirsty4Knowledge911 on
In the Netflix series Travelers, they have an episode where the truck moving 10.3 grams of antimatter was going to explode.
How large of an explosion would that have caused?
drluvdisc on
I’ve seen this movie, this is where the villains swoop in to hijack the truck and steal the technology for their fancy bombs or whatever.
itjustisman on
look at all that proper ppe in one picture!
thespice on
IndependentTune3994 on
The level of precision here makes rocket science look casual.
Myrtle_Nut on
I just wanna let all those lonely antimatters out there, just sitting in a box, not sure what to do in this world: You matter.
superpowerpinger on
It doesn’t matter.
symbouleutic on
Needs a suitable bumper sticker.
-+*Anti-matter on board*+-
Crossroads86 on
I read it could one day be used as a ultra dense engergy storage and propulsion technology for space travel.
trevorosgood on
Imagine getting into a car wreck and suddenly your half your vw bug is thanos snapped because the containment system misaligned a magnet.
betterthansex69 on
Antimatter is actually the most expensive substance on Earth, with production costs estimated between $62.5 trillion and 2.7 quadrillion per gram.
However nowhere near a gram is here. We are talking 1 .54 x 1 -²² g roughly.
caliborntravel on
Robert Langdon is on his way!
CouchPotatoFamine on
*”If antimatter and matter come into contact, they annihilate each other…”*
So, my ex-wife is anti-matter, eh?
Decebalus40 on
Can’t wait till we manage to use these things to boil water
whooo_me on
Imagine you’re a sci-fi set designer, and you see this.
“No Mr. Director, there’s no cabinets with loads of flashing lights. No sparking rods in the background. No CGI energy fields, a real anti-matter containment unit is really just kind of a big box….
…sigh, ok. We’ll do it your way.”
Zestyclose-Draft-342 on
Imagine being the driver and realizing you’re literally carrying the most expensive ‘don’t hit a pothole’ cargo in the universe 💀
223specialist on
Doesn’t antimatter exist randomly/naturally in the universe? Wouldn’t just about any non-naturally-occurring human made substance be more rare?
Like I bet Mt. Dew Baja Blast is more rare than anti-matter in the universe
AL-SHEDFI on
I don’t know why, but I remembered that cage in the movie Jurassic Park.
I wanted to know how big the explosion would be for 92 antiprotons. Here is the answer.
92 antiprotons would cause no detectable explosion whatsoever—the total energy release is microscopic and far below anything that could produce a noticeable blast, sound, heat, or damage.
Here’s the precise physics behind it:
Each antiproton has the same rest mass as a proton: approximately 938.272 MeV/c².
When an antiproton annihilates with a proton (or effectively with ordinary matter), both masses are completely converted to energy via (E = mc^2), yielding 1,876.544 MeV (or about (3.006 times 10^{-10}) joules) per annihilation pair.
For 92 antiprotons (assuming each fully annihilates), the total energy released is (2.77 times 10^{-8}) J (27.7 nanojoules).
To put this in perspective with explosive yield:
This equals the energy from roughly 6.61 picograms (6.61 × 10⁻¹² grams) of TNT.
For scale: 1 gram of TNT releases 4,184 J, so this is an absurdly tiny fraction—about 1.5 trillion times smaller than a single firecracker.
Other everyday comparisons:
It’s roughly the kinetic energy of a 1-gram object moving at 0.007 m/s (slower than a snail’s pace).
It would raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by only about 0.0000000024 °C (completely imperceptible).
It’s on the order of the bioluminescent flash from a few dozen fireflies combined, but released all at once as high-energy gamma rays, pions, and other particles rather than light or heat you could feel.
In practice, antiprotons annihilate almost instantly on contact with any ordinary matter (air, container walls, etc.), producing a spray of subatomic particles and radiation. But with only 92 of them, the event would be detectable only with sensitive particle-physics detectors (like those at CERN)—not as an “explosion” in any macroscopic sense. Even if all 92 annihilated simultaneously in one spot, there would be no audible pop, no flash visible to the naked eye, and no physical effect beyond a tiny, localized burst of radiation too weak to harm anything.
For context on how small antimatter quantities get “big”: you’d need about 23 milligrams of antimatter (plus an equal mass of matter) to match the energy of 1 kiloton of TNT. 92 antiprotons have a total mass of ~1.54 × 10⁻²² grams—27 orders of magnitude smaller.
So, in short: zero explosion. It’s a neat thought experiment in particle physics, but energetically it’s nothing.
Better be careful about princess Leia breaking in and stealing some of that antimatter for her son’s school project.
octoreadit on
The most expensive stuff on this planet per unit of mass.
Totally_Random0000 on
So they are on their way to the Vatican with this and are telling people?
Tom hanks will be able to track a box that size much easier than the last time he saved us all.
Oh just incase /s
CB_700_SC on
This really does not matter. /s
Certain-Definition51 on
TIL that antimatter is no longer theoretical!
Wow. I’m old.
cwhite225 on
Phew good thing they didn’t have SWIFT transport hauling that
Giant81 on
If containment failed on something like that with the resulting energy release be visible? I mean, I don’t believe this is going to go full fusion bomb blow a hole in the mountain side with that little but I’m curious as to how large of reaction they’re actually would be.
Edit: I scrolled further down after leaving this comment and found that somebody had done the math and found that the resultant reaction would be unnoticeably small.
invitedtothecookout on
I thought the rarest substance on earth currently was intelligence.
Apexnanoman on
Watch it get crashed into by a fent zombie behind the wheel of a ragged out Kia.
32 Comments
Scientists transported 92 antiprotons on a truck for the first time yesterday. The half-hour drive rehearses a process needed to move antimatter on an eight-hour drive from Geneva, Switzerland, to Düsseldorf, Germany.
Antimatter, including antiprotons, is the oppositely charged version of normal matter. It is extremely rare in the universe, and is produced at Geneva’s European Organization for Nuclear Research. (The facility can produce 400 million antiprotons per hour). If antimatter and matter come into contact, they annihilate each other, releasing significantly more energy than nuclear reactions. To avoid that, antiprotons were surrounded by a vacuumed box with magnets cooled to -452 degrees Fahrenheit.
[sauce](https://apnews.com/article/cern-antiproton-road-test-switzerland-geneva-17369ec3439bf5263d82ca11f0124895)
If anyone has ever had PET scan you’ve had a type of antimatter in you brain. This type of scan uses Positrons. Producing antiprotons is decidedly more awesome.
Can we move some to Washington DC in the vague hope some get released ?
In the Netflix series Travelers, they have an episode where the truck moving 10.3 grams of antimatter was going to explode.
How large of an explosion would that have caused?
I’ve seen this movie, this is where the villains swoop in to hijack the truck and steal the technology for their fancy bombs or whatever.
look at all that proper ppe in one picture!
The level of precision here makes rocket science look casual.
I just wanna let all those lonely antimatters out there, just sitting in a box, not sure what to do in this world: You matter.
It doesn’t matter.
Needs a suitable bumper sticker.
-+*Anti-matter on board*+-
I read it could one day be used as a ultra dense engergy storage and propulsion technology for space travel.
Imagine getting into a car wreck and suddenly your half your vw bug is thanos snapped because the containment system misaligned a magnet.
Antimatter is actually the most expensive substance on Earth, with production costs estimated between $62.5 trillion and 2.7 quadrillion per gram.
However nowhere near a gram is here. We are talking 1 .54 x 1 -²² g roughly.
Robert Langdon is on his way!
*”If antimatter and matter come into contact, they annihilate each other…”*
So, my ex-wife is anti-matter, eh?
Can’t wait till we manage to use these things to boil water
Imagine you’re a sci-fi set designer, and you see this.
“No Mr. Director, there’s no cabinets with loads of flashing lights. No sparking rods in the background. No CGI energy fields, a real anti-matter containment unit is really just kind of a big box….
…sigh, ok. We’ll do it your way.”
Imagine being the driver and realizing you’re literally carrying the most expensive ‘don’t hit a pothole’ cargo in the universe 💀
Doesn’t antimatter exist randomly/naturally in the universe? Wouldn’t just about any non-naturally-occurring human made substance be more rare?
Like I bet Mt. Dew Baja Blast is more rare than anti-matter in the universe
I don’t know why, but I remembered that cage in the movie Jurassic Park.
https://preview.redd.it/jziwcu4do7rg1.jpeg?width=1500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d17e354b268151af67f66b24897c66760a211063
I wanted to know how big the explosion would be for 92 antiprotons. Here is the answer.
92 antiprotons would cause no detectable explosion whatsoever—the total energy release is microscopic and far below anything that could produce a noticeable blast, sound, heat, or damage.
Here’s the precise physics behind it:
Each antiproton has the same rest mass as a proton: approximately 938.272 MeV/c².
When an antiproton annihilates with a proton (or effectively with ordinary matter), both masses are completely converted to energy via (E = mc^2), yielding 1,876.544 MeV (or about (3.006 times 10^{-10}) joules) per annihilation pair.
For 92 antiprotons (assuming each fully annihilates), the total energy released is (2.77 times 10^{-8}) J (27.7 nanojoules).
To put this in perspective with explosive yield:
This equals the energy from roughly 6.61 picograms (6.61 × 10⁻¹² grams) of TNT.
For scale: 1 gram of TNT releases 4,184 J, so this is an absurdly tiny fraction—about 1.5 trillion times smaller than a single firecracker.
Other everyday comparisons:
It’s roughly the kinetic energy of a 1-gram object moving at 0.007 m/s (slower than a snail’s pace).
It would raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by only about 0.0000000024 °C (completely imperceptible).
It’s on the order of the bioluminescent flash from a few dozen fireflies combined, but released all at once as high-energy gamma rays, pions, and other particles rather than light or heat you could feel.
In practice, antiprotons annihilate almost instantly on contact with any ordinary matter (air, container walls, etc.), producing a spray of subatomic particles and radiation. But with only 92 of them, the event would be detectable only with sensitive particle-physics detectors (like those at CERN)—not as an “explosion” in any macroscopic sense. Even if all 92 annihilated simultaneously in one spot, there would be no audible pop, no flash visible to the naked eye, and no physical effect beyond a tiny, localized burst of radiation too weak to harm anything.
For context on how small antimatter quantities get “big”: you’d need about 23 milligrams of antimatter (plus an equal mass of matter) to match the energy of 1 kiloton of TNT. 92 antiprotons have a total mass of ~1.54 × 10⁻²² grams—27 orders of magnitude smaller.
So, in short: zero explosion. It’s a neat thought experiment in particle physics, but energetically it’s nothing.
So isnt this the beginning of angels and demons?
https://preview.redd.it/4xujziyru7rg1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=415392a7f2eea0999fa7024307e9d9a21d457926
Better be careful about princess Leia breaking in and stealing some of that antimatter for her son’s school project.
The most expensive stuff on this planet per unit of mass.
So they are on their way to the Vatican with this and are telling people?
Tom hanks will be able to track a box that size much easier than the last time he saved us all.
Oh just incase /s
This really does not matter. /s
TIL that antimatter is no longer theoretical!
Wow. I’m old.
Phew good thing they didn’t have SWIFT transport hauling that
If containment failed on something like that with the resulting energy release be visible? I mean, I don’t believe this is going to go full fusion bomb blow a hole in the mountain side with that little but I’m curious as to how large of reaction they’re actually would be.
Edit: I scrolled further down after leaving this comment and found that somebody had done the math and found that the resultant reaction would be unnoticeably small.
I thought the rarest substance on earth currently was intelligence.
Watch it get crashed into by a fent zombie behind the wheel of a ragged out Kia.