Apr
11
April Café Scientifique
Posted by: Cafe Scientifique Vancouver | April 11, 2011 | Leave a Comment
Dear Café Scientifiquers,
Our next café will happen on April 19th, 7:30pm @ Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir Street). The speaker for the evening will be Andrea Gutierrez, a PhD student working at the UBC’s TRIUMF, one of the world’s leading subatomic physics laboratories. Andrea is involved with a project that is ranked as the #1 breakthrough in 2010 by Physics World (http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/44618), so don’t miss out on her talk:
Let’s trap antimatter! An overview of how it is done and its applications.
Our world is made of matter: protons, neutrons and electrons. Each of these particles has a “twin” particle (antiprotons, antineutrons and antielectrons) that looks just like a mirror image of it, with the same mass but opposite charge. When matter gets close enough to antimatter, they both disappear in a puff of energy. To trap antimatter it is fundamental to keep it away from matter, which is what makes it a really challenging task. Last November, we were able to catch cold antihydrogen for the first time (antiatoms composed of an antiproton and an antielectron) at ALPHA (Antihydrogen Laser PHysics Apparatus). In this talk, we will discuss how to produce, trap and detect antihydrogen!
We hope to see you there!
– Your Café Sci Vancouver Organizers