antimatter falls down

I agree with a growing viewpoint that mass is an emergent (not fundamental) property...

The emergence of hadron mass is being studied through AMBER@CERN: https://home.cern/news/news/physics/meet-amber

It is still open how hadrons such as protons and neutrons acquire their mass.

As you say, it is thought that the majority of a hadron’s mass actually comes from the mass-energy equivalence of the energy of the gluons that bind its constituent quarks together.
 
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I meant to post on this when I saw it on the BBC last week, but my brain melted when I tried reading into the ALPHA experiment. And then reading how Prof Jeffrey Hangst has spent 30 years building this (or it that failing to get it to work until it finally did?) That's Stoicism for you right up with Monty Python and 'they said you couldn't build a castle on the swamp'!

I also realised that this is was a win whatever. If relativity was proven to still hold a load of theoretical guys would say 'yay', if it was shown not to hold the same lot might have gone 'yay' and run off to fill out funding requests to examine this, and the guys at CERN get to go ask for more money to rebuild ALPHA but bigger this time.

Just as my brain congealed again my eldest pointed me at a paper from her work where they are hunting Axions and I went back to being a gibbering wreck. Just got back to normal. Note to self, approach academic papers on fundamental particles only under adult supervision!

Favourite post from linked paper “Gravity is just so bloody weak, you really have to be careful,”
Jeff is a really great guy. Personable, amazingly smart, but still able to explain what is going on for people down at my level. And when we explain the limitations, and then brainstorm, well, paper published.
My job is a combination of pushing the limits of the technology, detailing those limits to the physicists, and working around those limits to do what they need.
I've worked with Jeff and crew since 2002 (roughly). And really, my brain also melts when they answer my questions.

The first goal was to prove creation and storage of antimatter. It's a variant of the "universal solvent" problem in chemistry. If it dissolves everything, how do you store it?? As explained to me, the bottom four quantum states of antihydrogen differ in that two of them like magnetic fields, and two do not. So when they mix the antiprotons and positrons, half of the antihydrogen immediately leaves the trap and annihilates. When they turn off the trap hours or days later, they see the annihilation signature of the balance in the detector (a combination of some particles and gamma rays (I think?). When they published, I received MAJOR credit....as in, "photo courtesy of....". Obviously, my 15 minutes of fame which nobody on the planet noticed (or cared). I milked the antimatter bottle when I gave tours in the building, asking the people if it was possible to store antimatter like in the movie Angels and Demons. It was great at the time, but alas, the tour people have aged out. No references to Terminator 3, Red October, or Angels and Demons as they look at me as if I'm nuts. Correctly so, but I digress. I hate it that everybody ages out of the good material.

Edit: One of my best shticks was talking about how the T3 robot cut into the vacuum vessel and gases spewed out, and that I kept e-mailing the producers to explain how that is so wrong and they had to fix it..... until the FBI came to my door "requesting" that I stop. That always got laughs. Science is best served with humility and humor. The building I work in is rather "daunting" to those who have never been there before, so I understand how that can intimidate the public.

Second bottle was designed to allow laser spectroscopy, to determine how antihydrogen differs from hydrogen with respect to electron shells and levels. Lase the puppies and measure the spectra as the electron drops level. It was consistent with hydrogen to about 10 to the bazillion power.

This third bottle was part of the continuing quest to understand antimatter and what it means, this time gravity. Perhaps Jeff meant to do this all along, I do not know.

I am happy that I was a small part of that process. Paid the bills.

John
 
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To any physicist: are time and gravity dual in the following sense? (thought experiment) Imagine space as a 3D lattice, stiff but slightly springy (inertia), with mass suspended throughout; then the whole universe moves through a 4th dimension namely time. The mass(es) deform the 3D lattice structure as a result, analagous to the familiar ball-over-rubber-sheet picture, but with time as the external dimension.
 
When I read an article about this the first thing that crossed my mind was; "I wonder how much John was involved with this."
Totally. I was part of a group of 5 people who created the most advanced technology for making these types of magnets. That was 27 years ago, and we are still the SOTA in this. I laugh now, as the person I insisted they hire so I can train to replace me is really really good. I recently went into the division head office and told her that I love it when I am correct, he is certainly able to replace me.
While it could be argued that the bar was rather low, I prefer to think of it as HE IS THAT GOOD. (yah, that doesn't sound good.) (everyone has an opinion)😉

Most funny, the hardware is older than him. But the software he brings in is at least from this millennia.

Three years from now, who knows. I may be looking in the rearview mirror. If only other groups would take me off speed-dial. (there was a "failure in a billion dollar project where the people who engineered and ran the crews to do the work are almost all retired...sigh, almost. ) I had to dig out the overhead transparencies I used to detail the work as well as the dot matrix printed paper copies of the procedures.
I must admit, as long as it is fun, it is not work.

John

ps.. The alpha group (one physicist in the group), I taught the format for the winding file (a type of G-code) to provide the instructions for the computer that controlled the winding. As a result, all I did was transfer the file to the machine so the tech could use it to wind the coils.

So, basically I was just an errand boy, or monkey, trained to write to a CD, walk down the hall, negotiate the steps down to the production floor, and hand the CD to the tech. But I did carry a clipboard while doing this, so I looked like I was actually working. (sorry, no pocket protector, I have my (low) standards). But to my credit, I did survive the stairs (no gum or scissors involved).
 
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@jneutron

ALPHA Experiment.jpg


Your magnet may have killed off the Star Trek franchise. Warp drive probably doesn't work. Engineer Scott reduced to Impulse Power. 🙁

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/warp-drives-best-hope-dies/

The Alcubierre Drive looks extremely unlikely to work without antigravity. TBH, I always thought it was a daft idea. Nothing goes faster than light. A child of ten knows that! 😀
 
The magnet drawing points to all the mirrors, very high precision solenoids made with .004 inch superconducting wires.
What is not clearly shown is there are about 7 octupoles wound along the length. Some are 2 meters, some half meter. They produce magnetic fields which are zero field in the center and increase as radial distance cubed. The octupoles were wound using the ten-axis motion control platform, the solenoids were wound on a 3 axis winder.
John
 
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@jneutron

View attachment 1221777

Your magnet may have killed off the Star Trek franchise. Warp drive probably doesn't work. Engineer Scott reduced to Impulse Power. 🙁

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/warp-drives-best-hope-dies/

The Alcubierre Drive looks extremely unlikely to work without antigravity. TBH, I always thought it was a daft idea. Nothing goes faster than light. A child of ten knows that! 😀
The key to warp drive is to make LIGHT go faster. All one needs to do is change the dielectric constant of the universe. Which is about as easy as changing the gravitational constant of the universe (You just DO it!)

Nothing kills off the Star Trek franchise.
 
Here is one layer of my winds of an octupole. That is the #18 AWG equivalent superconductor that does the 2500 amp thing.
1696882031369.png

Not sure who made the octupole you show. It is a room temperature magnet for use in an x-ray synchrotron.

I've been working with Argonne on their APS-U upgrade and Berkeley for their ALS-U upgrade, it might also be one of theirs.
Of course, not to make magnets which I like to do, but to wire them in accordance with the NEC, which I dislike with the passion of a thousand suns.

John
 
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"Training" is what all other superconducting magnets do. It sometimes takes many training quenches to "teach" the magnet how to get up to the desired current. Typically the training is a result of the wires settling into a position due to magnetic forces which can be 5 to 10 thousand lbs/inch or heating of an internal splice joint.

An extreme case of break-in?

dave
 
From the article:
"To make sure that this asymmetry was due to gravity, the researchers had to control the strength of the magnetic fields to a precision of at least one part in 10,000. "

How much of that is due to your work, and how much to the control electronics? Or is that not something that can be separated?