Antiproton
Encyclopedia : A : AN : ANT : Antiproton
The antiproton (aka pbar, [\bar]) is the antiparticle of the proton. Antiprotons are short-lived in nature, since any collision with a proton will cause both particles to be annihilated in a burst of energy. It was discovered in the year 1955 by University of California Berkeley Physicists Emilio Segre and Owen Chamberlain, for which they were awarded a 1959 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Their formation requires energy equivalent to a temperature of 10 billion °C, and Big Bangs aside, this does not tend to happen naturally. However, at CERN, protons are accelerated in the Proton Synchrotron (PS) to an energy of 26 GeV, and then smashed into an iridium rod. The protons bounce off the iridium nuclei with enough energy for matter to be created. A range of particles and antiparticles are formed, and the antiprotons are separated off using magnets.
In mid-June 2006, CERN succeeded in determining the mass of antiproton, which they measured at 1836.153674 times heavier than an electron, with uncertainity of +/- 5 at the sixth decimal digit. This is exactly the same as the weight of a "regular" proton, necessitating further research into the nature of difference between matter and anti-matter, in order to explain how our universe survived the Big Bang and why so little remains of antimatter today.#redirect
Andromeda
In the science fiction television series Andromeda, antiprotons were the basic fuel source of Commonwealth civilization, lighting cities and powering spaceships from star to star.See also
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.