NIF and Anti-Hydrogen

[dryson]

I was reading at NASA that anti-hydrogen was made last year at CERN but it did not last very long.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/technology/warp/antistat.html

What could we summize would be the result if we had a slug of anti-hydrogen and placed it within the NIF sphere where we then zapped it with the laser?

For those not familar with the NIF here is a link.

https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/nif/

 

[origin]

What could we summize would be the result if we had a slug of anti-hydrogen and placed it within the NIF sphere where we then zapped it with the laser?

I don't know how you could make a 'slug' of anti-hydrogen or how you could keep it from interacting with regular matter but all that aside, I believe shooting a laser into anti-hydrogen would have the same results as shooting a laser into hydrogen.

 

[vogon13]

Well, the NIF needs tritium to add to the deuterium to facilitate fusion with the meager laser power currently available.

If you zapped anti-hydrogen, nothing much is going to happen in regards to fusion, and the technical challenges in getting enough anti-hydrogen to make a fuel pellet is daunting.

Also, the power needed to make the anti-hydrogen is going to drastically upset (negatively) the design goal of the NIF (assuming you could fuse the stuff), ie, that the power released in the reaction is going to balance the power that went into making the reaction.

 

[dryson]

The term slug is used to describe the eraser sized pellet of hydrogen used in the NIF experiment. The anti-hydrogen which has had 50,000 atoms made could be made in the same size pellet as that of the hydrogen pellet.

http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/717279/

I am not certain the exact affects the NIF would have upon the anti-hydrogen slug but it would release energy opposite to what its hydrogen counterpart would. If both pellets or slugs we were able to kept apart and two seperate lasers zapped each one at the precise time that the other was zapped the result could be a controlled release of energy that could be controlled by using the RF antenna's from the Vasimr engine that would direct the plasma in the same manner that they do in the Vasimr to create a thrut potential.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Sadly, as usual, incorrect. A slug of antihydrogen would respond exactly the same as a slug of hydrogen to the fusion process.

This ignores the obvious problems of:

Containing a slug of antihydrogen of course would be highly energy intensive, if it's even possible. There is no current way to contain a neutral particle (which is what an atom of antihydrogen would be) without having it interact with regular matter, thus annihilating. A few dozen such atoms would blow up the facility when they contacted regular matter.

Of course, the other problem is that only a few atoms of antihydrogen have been created, and didn't last long. A real problem in creating a slug you couldn't contain...


I despise people who make up their own physics instead of using what the rest of the Universe does

 

[origin]

The term slug is used to describe the eraser sized pellet of hydrogen used in the NIF experiment. The anti-hydrogen which has had 50,000 atoms made could be made in the same size pellet as that of the hydrogen pellet.

Holy crap! You really think that 50,000 atoms will make an eraser sized (pencil eraser?) pellet!! Do you have any idea how far off you are on that estimate!?!?!?!

1 single gram of hydrogen is 602,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms. Now of course an eraser sized pellet might be less than a gram so lets for the sake of argument say that it is 1 milligram. How many hydrgen atoms would that be?
There would be 602,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in a milligram.

 

[yevaud]

I just have to add, the physical description of the target in virtually all current fusion experiments isn't even the size of a pencil eraser. In point of fact, they are very small indeed (described at times as "smaller than a single grain of rice").

 

[dryson]

When in that case MW all we would need are a few atoms of both atom types that are built to the appropriate mass that would allow for a controlled reaction when zapped with the laser. Does anyone have any information on how many atoms of each when they interact with each other would create an energetic release proportional to the number of atoms used.

What I mean can be seen below:

atom type / number of atoms energetic response yield

Hydrogen/1/Anti-Hydrogen/1/ ?
Hydrogen/1/Anti-Hydrogen/2/ ?
Hydrogen/2/Anti-Hydrogen/1/ ?
Hydrogen/2/Anti-Hydrogen/2/ ?
Hydrogen/3/Anti-Hydrogen/1/ ?
Hydrogen/1/Anti-Hydrogen/3/ ?

 

[MeteorWayne]

Is that supposed to be something useful with all ?'s at the end?

You're the master physicist (with your own physics, not the same as the rest of us). Do the calculations. Fill in the numbers.