this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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Science

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[–] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 4 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Not mentioned was how big the ---BOOM--- would be if the container jar failed.

[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 18 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Only 92 antiprotons, antimatter annihilation is famously energetic but that's still a tiny amount, I don't think you'd even see anything happen without special equipment to detect it.

[–] frank@sopuli.xyz 5 points 4 days ago

Yeah, I couldn't find it but I saw a funny quote about the energy quantity. Definitely in the "oscilloscope can detect it" order of power.

It's comically low and the next step, which is taking some anti protons to Dusseldorf for further study, would be a similar quantity.

[–] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 3 points 4 days ago

Whoa, that's a pretty big BOO... oh.

Okay, thanks.

[–] knightly@pawb.social 12 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Not even enough to raise the temperature of the containment bottle by a degree. 92 antiparticles vs. trillions of atoms of steel and composite.

In previous articles the energy wouldn't have been enough to boil a cup of coffee.

"The device on Cern’s truck will carry about 1,000 antimatter particles, weighing about a billionth of a trillionth of a gram. Should the containment fail, and the antimatter make contact with normal matter, the resulting pulse of energy would be so feeble, the load doesn’t even warrant a radioactive label."

[–] porcoesphino@mander.xyz 8 points 4 days ago

In another article the author wrote it was about the same energy it takes to press a key on a keyboard