[HN Gopher] Physicists drive antihydrogen breakthrough at CERN
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       Physicists drive antihydrogen breakthrough at CERN
        
       Author : naves
       Score  : 86 points
       Date   : 2025-11-22 20:54 UTC (5 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (phys.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
        
       | chasil wrote:
       | I think the same subject was addressed in both of these...
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45979220
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46011889
        
         | gus_massa wrote:
         | The first one "220" has a nice discussion, in particular a
         | comment by pfdietz:
         | 
         | > _It increases the rate of production of neutral antihydrogen
         | from antiprotons and positrons by a factor of 8. It doesn 't
         | increase the efficiency of production of antiprotons, which is
         | the extremely inefficient, energy intensive part._
        
       | modeless wrote:
       | This piece argues that antimatter could be feasible for space
       | propulsion and we could start developing it now:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46073414
        
         | p2detar wrote:
         | There was also a great episode on antimatter engines recently
         | by PBS Space Time.
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA4X9P98ess
        
         | IsTom wrote:
         | If you can electromagnetically trap enough antimatter to use it
         | as fuel you could as well trap a miniature charged black hole
         | that can be fed regular matter to produce power, which skips
         | the whole inefficient part of making antimatter.
        
           | DennisP wrote:
           | Depends. Do we know how to obtain a miniature black hole?
        
             | octaane wrote:
             | There have been several proposals. This paper proposes a
             | feasable mechanism[1]:
             | 
             | -"a SBH could be artificially created by firing a huge
             | number of gamma rays from a spherically converging laser.
             | The idea is to pack so much energy into such a small space
             | that a BH will form."
             | 
             | 1. https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803
        
           | impossiblefork wrote:
           | Miniature black holes would just evaporate. Antimatter
           | wouldn't.
        
           | vkou wrote:
           | > a miniature charged black hole that can be fed regular
           | matter to produce power,
           | 
           | What form of power and through what principle?
        
             | andrewflnr wrote:
             | Hawking radiation, I think. Yes, this is at best
             | speculatively feasible.
        
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