From: Ndunlks@aol.com
Date sent: Sat, 3 May 1997 01:19:03 -0400 (EDT)
To: iufo@world.std.com
Subject: IUFO: From Parascope ~ Anti-matter Created

Scientists Create Antimatter

from ParaScope staff reports

You heard Scotty discuss it in Star Trek at great length. Popular theory states that if just a tiny bit of it comes into contact with our world, a catastrophic explosion might result.

It's not quite of this world, but it's more than a fantasy from a parallel universe.

It's anitmatter. And it's real.

Earlier this year, a group of theoretical physicists and other scientists led by German Professor Walter Oelert of Nuremberg University working at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, tore a page from pulp science fiction tales and thrust it into the stark reality of modern scientific achievement.

For a barely measurable fraction of a second, scientists in a lab were able to create nine anti-hydrogen atoms (or nine atoms of "hydrogen antimatter"). Alas, the achievement was a fleeting one, as the hydrogen antimatter atoms were all destroyed after less than 40 billionths of a second as they came into contact with regular "positive" matter.

"If you watch 'Star Trek,' you'll know the USS Enterprise was driven by antimatter power,'' said Neil Calder, a spokesman for CERN. "We're not there yet," he cautioned, "but this is a major step.''

As early as the 1950s, scientists have been able to create sub-atomic particles of antimatter in the lab, and physicists have generally theorized about the existence of antimatter as long ago as the mid-1930s. But it was not until this year that researchers could actually create an entire atom--albeit a simple hydrogen atom--out of "pure antimatter."

Made up of only a proton and a single electron, CERN researchers picked hydrogen as their target antimatter atom because of its simple construction, attempting to pair an antiproton with an antielectron, also known as a positron, familiar to 'Star Trek' viewers as the basic element of conductivity in Lt. Cmdr. Data's "positronic brain."

While you might think such research into the tiny world of atoms could be conducted in a cramped lab, CERN scientists actually used a gigantic underground loop--a super-collider (or "atom smasher")--to whip antiprotons into a furious frenzy, zipping them around the accelerator loop and through a jet of xenon gas at roughly three million laps per second.

During this process, in extremely rare instances, one of the super-excited antiprotons would collide with a xenon atom, giving off an electron and positron. Over the course of three weeks, only nine anti-hydrogen atoms were created in such collisions.

Each antimatter atom, buzzing along at close to the speed of light, lasted only about 40 billionths of a second (long enough to travel 33 feet through the super-collider) before being obliterated on contact with regular "positive" matter.

Researchers are excited about the prospect of harnessing antimatter as a source of clean, unlimited energy, while weapons developers are interested in antimatter's potential as an explosive element.

Critics of anti-matter research have postulated that experiments in creating anti-matter particles could release an unpredictable chain reaction resulting in gigantic, uncontrolled explosions on a scale much larger than hydrogen bombs.