Matter vs Antimatter ... doesnt really matter who wins

Matter vs Antimatter

A couple of days ago, I sat through the movie Angels and Demons, a film based on author Dan Brown’s sequel to the famous Da Vinci code. While the film itself kicked so much ass, I couldn’t get my head around all the false information that the writer had stuffed in the plot of the movie.

To avoid spoiling the story for you, I will try my best to stay as far away from it as possible. The movie refers to “Antimatter” as “The God Particle” (don’t worry, this article isn’t about religion Vs science) the film argues that Antimatter can be used as the energy source of the future. To clarify why I think this is simply sci-fi bullshit, I will explain in the next few paragraphs what I found out during my brief research.

First off, do not confuse Antimatter with Dark Matter. Dark matter is an invisible mass that can only be detected by observing its gravitational effects. It does not emit radiation or light. One example of Dark Matter is a black hole. On a side note, larger black holes aren’t identified as such on the basis of their gravitational lensing (a phenomenon in which light bends or warps around the black hole – check the picture).

Now that we’ve established that Dark Matter, as interesting as it is, has nothing to do with this article so let’s focus on the topic.

Matter Vs Antimatter

Matter includes everything you see around you, any object that has both Mass and Volume is classified as matter. It doesn’t really matter how many substances the objects are made off, if those substances interact in a way such that their mass and volume can be known, then that substance is classified as Matter, regardless of the size of the object.

Matter is said to exist in many forms: solid, liquid, gas and plasma, in addition to other theoretical constructs such as Bose–Einstein condensates, Fermionic condensates, and quark-gluon plasma... don't even ask!

Since matter has mass and volume, It occupies space, Antimatter on the other hand; is matter that is composed of the antiparticles of those that constitute ordinary matter…. lost already? Allow me to explain...

The Atom, that is the most basic unit of matter, consists of a nucleus and electrons which orbit around it, the nucleus in turn, contains protons that are positively charged and electrically neutral Neutrons. The cloud of electrons around it is negatively charged.

In the case of Antimatter, Protons and Electrons are simply inverted. The Positron is a positively charged Electron and the Antiproton is a negatively charged Proton. An Antiproton and a Positron can form one Antihydrogen atom in the same way an electron and a proton can form a normal matter hydrogen atom.

When the big bang happened, it’s argued that massive amounts of Matter collided with massive amounts of Antimatter which resulted in the Bang. However, here stands one of the biggest unsolved problems in physics: If matter and antimatter created this universe we live in; WHY are parts of the universe made up almost of matter while other parts are entirely antimatter?

The whole purpose of this article is to say this: if matter and antimatter were to come into contact, it would result in the total annihilation of both which is the case when particles and antiparticles collide. One positive result of such collisions is photon emission i.e. the production of high energy photons and pairs of matter-antimatter which, if harvested, could be used as an energy source.

In antimatter-matter collisions which result in photon emission, the entire mass of the particles is converted to kinetic energy (the extra energy which an object possesses due to its motion).

Generating a single antiproton is immensely difficult and requires particle accelerators and vast amounts of energy—millions of times more than is released once it is annihilated when it comes into contact with ordinary matter. Although matter can be converted into anti-matter, the resulting antimatter is only equal to 50% of the original matter inputted. Balancing this, when that antimatter collides with ordinary matter, energy equal to twice the mass of that antimatter is released. If the conversion process itself weren’t so costly, antimatter production could be 100% efficient.

Most researchers at CERN (the world's largest particle physics laboratory, situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva ) argue that the 100% efficiency claims are overly optimistic, since the current antiproton production rate is a mere several pictograms to each 20 million dollars spent.

Production costs aside; storage is another major obstacle in terms of harnessing antiprotons. Antiprotons are negatively charged so they tend to repel one another, meaning that they can’t be concentrated in a small volume.

In conclusion to all this scientific blabber, Dan Brown’s idea that it is actually feasible to use antimatter as a source of energy in the near future is…unlikely to say the least. Personally, I think we should invest our hopes into more realistic energy sources like hydrogen fuel cells, Solar and wind power. It is a nice dream though Dan, I’ll give you that.

douf

RIP NUKEM

Over 18 million unique hits, published in three gaming magazines, linked on nearly every gaming blog on the internet, digged over 6,600 times between its three appearances on the Digg front page, Slashdotted twice and still going...

The List - http://duke.a-13.net/

Updated by Eli Hodapp - http://twitter.com/hodapp - http://a-13.net/ - Last Edit: 5/06/09

If you've got something to add, drop me an email or @hodapp on Twitter.

Feel free to re-post or publish this, just please keep the entire list intact with credits at the bottom and email me a link, @hodapp on Twitter, or send me a copy!

Duke Nukem Forever was a computer game that had been under development by 3D Realms since its announcement on April 28th, 1997, originally slated to use the (then) state of the art Quake II 3D engine. A few months later, screen shots were published in PC Gamer magazine, along with an intended release date of mid-1998. Excitement grew in May of 1998 when a few short video clips of Duke Nukem Forever were shown at E3... Surely a final release of the game was right around the corner!

Just about when mid-1998 arrived (June, specifically) 3D Realms announced they were changing 3D engines to Epic's Unreal engine. George Broussard, the producer and co-creator of the Duke Nukem series insisted that this change would not cause any significant delay, despite all logic pointing to the contrary. Also at this point, Broussard assured everyone Duke Nukem Forever would see a 1999 release.

1999 came and went, Duke Nukem Forever saw another engine change, this time to an updated version of the same Unreal engine they were working on. 3D Realms even released a Duke Nukem Christmas card, insinuating a 2000 release. Not surprisingly, the year 2000 came and went without Duke Nukem Forever. Another Christmas card was released, this time hinting at a 2001 release.

In the summer of 2001, 3D Realms released the most substantial proof to date that Duke Nukem Forever has ever existed in any form- a two and a half minute game play trailer:

In 2002, 3D Realms hired new programmers, and decided instead of switching to another 3D engine, they would just develop their own, making this the fourth engine change since the initial announcement of the game. Broussard eventually came out to say that at this point, "95%" of the already designed levels had been scraped, and had they remained on track they would have been "two years" off from releasing Duke Nukem Forever under the Unreal engine.

In early 2003, the CEO of Take Two, 3D Realms' publisher announced Duke Nukem Forever would be released by the end of the year. This eventually changed to "by the end of 2004" and then "in the beginning of 2005." In September of 2004, GameSpot.com revealed a rumor that Duke Nukem Forever had made its fifth 3D engine change, this time using the Quake III engine. Broussard denied the rumor, but announced only a few days later that they had switched to a different physics engine for the game.

Duke Nukem Forever news in the years to follow was limited to rumblings on forums and mostly consisted of drama between 3D Realms and Take Two which wasn't very interesting. During this time, the only thing we've even saw that provided any proof that anything was even happening with Duke Nukem Forever is a small (and I mean SMALL) 200x125 image of a supposed screen shot which was posted on several 3D Realms job postings online.

A Duke Nukem Forever teaser was released on the 19th of December, 2007. Along with it came the normal "blah blah blah, when it's done" we've heard before.

(If the video doesn't show up, disable ad blockers.)

On June 5th, 2008 ShackNews posted a story entitled "New Duke Nukem Forever Footage Released" regarding a short interview of George Broussard and Scott Miller on The Jace Hall Show. During the interview, Jace asks them what has been taking them so long. Broussard replies, "There's been a lot of mistakes and a lot of lessons we had to learn, most of all a lot of World of Warcraft." A remark intended as a tongue in cheek joke I'm sure, but probably not far from the truth.

(Interview starts at 2:30, gameplay footage starts at 4:15.)
Click here if the embedded video doesn't work.

Plasmic Buttons

Review and proofread, its filled with grammar errors, written in a rush so i will try to review and edit it later on, if you have any comment or would like to submit a corrected version feel free to send me an Email or contact me direct on AIM, or MSN.
cheers.
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Plasma X:

Adobe cs4 is out and i just got my hands on it, the master edition, the new improvements introduced to its tools is immense, perhaps the most important tool i should be talking about is Photoshop but i think i will leave this to later and start with the new tools i am playing with right now.

SoundBooth: in the past adobe sound editing tools were pretty straight forward, concentrated tool made to provide sound engineers with a set of modules that help them do whatever they needed done, that was offered through CoolEdit and later Audition, now in SoundBooth what Adobe has done is strip the program down from most of the more complex tools only used by hardcore sound engineers and instead put sets of tools to be used directly by regular sound editors and mixers such as myself. so if you need to do some sound mastering, sound effects you open up SB and click here and there and your done. although the lack of a proper mixing environment is a great flaw i think in the program but its not a big deal because you can always go back to Audition and do the sound creation/mixing part or use a proper mixing program to begin with like Abelton or Acid.

AfterEffects: i have to admit this is the first time i get to work with AE, two weeks back i didn't even know what it was for, i cant really compare it to cs3 or anything before that because i am not very sure what kinds of improvements/enhancements were introduced in this new release, but i will tell you this, its awesome, i would suggest following [link] they offer the best tutorials for AE i have seen around.

Kuler: if you don't know Adobe Kuler then your lost homey, Kuler is Adobe community's color theme creation thingy, you know a place where you can find the coolest palettes, see what the newest themes and colors. well thats [link], now Adobe has integrated Kuler into its applications so now you can actually access Kuler community from within your application, search for color themes, edit them on the fly and even upload and share them. this save a ton of lost time looking for color guides.

Indesign: if you're amongst the unlucky few of magazine layout designers, the ones that get stuck with loads of text and spend all day long drawing tables and cutting down text so they would fit and you wont have widows or children hanging out then your in treat, the new ID is just amazing, it offers a ton of new enhancements and newly introduced features, you can get a full list of new features from adobe's website [link] but if you want the short version, well it handles text flow a lot better, auto placement of multiple objects has become a tad better and best of all it can export SWF. suck it Internet!

Dreamweaver: weaving my dreams, i feel i need to be writing about Adobe AIR before going into the web part of the suite, but what the hell Dreamweaver CS4 is pretty much as good as CS3 except its better in so many ways, the new Live view is neat, very accessible, also the new code hint thing is great, you get all kind of help while writing in your codes so you can spot your errors right away and save time on reviewing the code and testing it, DW now supports Photoshop's smart objects. Loss-less web ftw!

Adobe AIR: not exactly a product of a tool or even a program, its not even included on the Disk, AIR is adobe's runtime environment that can deliver rich internet related applications to work on your desktop, even offline using Javascript, Flex or even Flash, many have started developing applications that run on AIR .. :) and best thing is, they run great on any computer, try Adobe Media Player.

Encore: Produces HD video .. so i didn't even install it.

Premier: same thing i am not a big fan of video editing so .. Skip!

OnLocation: same still, but i just wanna say Recording straight to Disk never been as easy and great, one of my friends explained to me the pain he had to go through to record any movie, record, disconnect, copy and rerecord, now you can record everything on the fly, get 5 terabytes and record all the videos you need.

Director: to be honest i haven't used Director since it was Macromedia Director, and i didn't even use it professionally so i would keep this short and say, if you need to keep track of your crew, use Director.

Contribute: Perhaps the best new product by Adobe, Contribute is web design for noobs, if you want a website up and running in no time but you lack the knowledge of Codes and scripts use Contribute, trust me you wont regret it, Contribute has In-Browser editing, which means you can design your website from within Firefox, how easy can that be?, its also fully integrated with Dreamweaver so you can work with both of them simultaneously. the Reviewing feature which let you pass your work to your client, they review it and send it back to you with notes to tell you what to change and what to keep. bravo Adobe very cleaver.

Fireworks: if you still think FW is Photoshop without all the cool things then you need to go away now, FW has long identified itself as Web graphics editor, but it has more built in styles, and content than photo shop, it edits vectors and pixel based files, but it remains directed to the web so no fancy prints can be done in Fireworks as far as i know, good thing now is that it has further support for AIR and it can now handle and export PDF.

Flash: it will take me a whole week to talk about Flash, but i doubt anyone would be interested in reading this much anyways, so keep it short and brief, the new Flash comes with a whole new User Interface, Frames on the bottom like regular animation programs, and like other animation programs, FLASH now supports 3D animation, YES 3d Animation has finally made its way to everyone's favorite program Flash. i can see the founders of Macromedia having tears in their eyes seeing their baby growing up and offering 3d animation to people like me, but hey that's not even remotely the best of it, Inverse kinematic with Bones!, Google what i just said, IK is the bone structure for 3D animation where you can move a parts of bodies separately but as easy as moving the whole thing, there is more to it than this of course but i just cant explain it, what else Motion Presets and Motion Editor, i swear this gets better and better, Adobe has seriously exceeded my expectations this time, even though they haven't put any new enhancements or changed anything with ActionScript but i am cool with it, i never code anyways.

Illustrator: Bleed, this may not be as important for you as it would be someone that deals with printing all the time, Bleed is where the print house would Slice the papers, so normally you would have to set your design exactly on the bleed lines for them to know where to slice and where is too far, now with Illy's new support for bleed you just set the marks for them and they just get it directly, now need to waste time readjusting your design so the idiots at the printer wont mess it up but millimeters.

Bridge, Version Cue, Device Central, Dynamic Link: they take up like 1.5 Gigabytes of your disk space so they deserve to have a word or two about them, the new Bridge is just as good as the previous ones, it has support for all Adobe products' files, video audio and graphic, it can edit the Metadata of all kinds of files, navigation with it is very straightforward and save a lot of time opening the wrong files for previewing. Version Cue is the a server client that lets you handle assets and files globally in the work place, access all the files you are working on from different computers and collaborate on them in real-time. device central includes support for new phones and handhelds. and dynamic link is for Video rendering.

Photoshop: when CS3 offered 3D Models basic editing everyone was like, wow slow down a bit this is too hard for me to understand, what Vanishing point how does that work, if that what we thought yesterday, then today we will be stunned, Photoshop has gone All the way 3D, 3D Painting and 3D animation, lights and Materials, just like in BodyPaint of 3ds Max. CS4 has a ton of enhancements on old tools, every single tool has been refined and redone, the Burn and Dodge tool work differently now, they don't just darken and lighten areas they actually work the way they were suppose to work in the first place, the new Levels Panel, Vibrance, Audio Syncing controls, and best of all, The full 3D rotation tools, and the improved Vanishing Point module, to talk about what Adobe has done to Photoshop will seriously take a lot of time, just to give you a little tip on what more to expect: Photoshop now can utilize OpenGL to run the interface, so now when you zoom in to whatever percentage you will always have smooth and clean edges, remember when you zoom to 33% or something not equal like that you always have Jagged edges? well not anymore, you can zoom in and out with out any loss in visual quality, also you can now rotate the canvas freely and on the fly, not flip it, just tilt it the way you want.

thanks Adobe for all your work, i strongly suggest upgrading to CS4 whenever you have the chance, you won't regret it. all the new products have new interfaces that offers better accessibility and are far more user friendly than ever.

cheers and thanks for reading