ListNook

McCoy818 Mar 24, 2026 +290

somewhere a truck driver had "transporting antimatter" on his manifest and just had to act normal about it

290

church-rosser Mar 24, 2026 +40

i got pig iron i got pig iron I got all pig iron

40

jigokubi Mar 24, 2026 +11

That's a mighty fine line.

11

church-rosser Mar 24, 2026 +3

A hot cup of coffee and a cold glass of tea.

3

temptationsensation Mar 25, 2026 +1

The rock Island line, she's a mighty good road.

1

Zappa1990 Mar 25, 2026

I love that song. A lot of nostalgia with that one.

0

Setsune_W Mar 24, 2026 +236

Still an extremely impressive feat, but I feel like that title is implying things that "in a truck" would clarify.

236

twenafeesh Mar 24, 2026 +140

I agree... Title makes it sound like they teleported it somehow. But they actually put it in a truck in some kind of fancy magnetic containment and drove it 5 km. Still neat, still a first.

140

Upset_Albatross_9179 Mar 24, 2026 +43

I had the opposite thought from the headline. I thought "oh they had antimatter confined and used magnets or lasers to move it a few feet to a different part of the chamber." That they loaded it into a truck and drove it around is absolutely wild to me.

43

ih-shah-may-ehl Mar 25, 2026 +5

It's all fun and games until the containment field loses power :)

5

blaster1-112 Mar 25, 2026 +7

I do think the destructive power of antimatter is usually quite overstated. Considering how little antimatter is actually produced annually by CERN. 1 kg of antimatter would generate around 43 Megatons of energy if fully reacted. Which would be incredibly destructive (around 0.86 tsar Bombas (edited)). (1 megaton is around 4.184 *10^15 Joules). Which is an incredible amount of energy. However, CERN produces nearly 30 million antihydrogen atoms per year if running non-stop. That's 3*10^-20 th kg. Which means a full yearly production of antihydrogen reacting away would yield the force of: approximately 5.4 * 10^-3 joules. Or 5.4 millijoules which is negligible. It's good to know we can transport it, but at the current amounts of antimatter, it's not a major concern regardless.

7

foolishorangutan Mar 25, 2026 +4

You’ve made a mistake with the tsar bomba. It was 50 megatons. In others words, rather than 1 kg of antimatter and 1 kg of matter being 1000 tsar bombas, it would actually be around 0.86 tsar bombas.

4

blaster1-112 Mar 25, 2026 +3

You are correct. It's indeed slightly less powerful than a single tsar Bomba.

3

bluuuuurn Mar 26, 2026 +3

>Or 5.4 millijoules which is negligible So what are we talkin' about here, like a "thbbpp" at least?

3

Asclepius777 Mar 24, 2026 +76

I’m gonna be real with you, teleporting shit a few plank lengths is w/e for me, that happens all the time. But if it can go on a truck, it can go on a rocket. And if it can go on a rocket, we can go to the next solar system over

76

SaltyRedditTears Mar 24, 2026 +63

The trisolarians are fucked

63

Kolby_Jack33 Mar 24, 2026 +19

This headline is really the first shot across the bow for those alien bastards. SOON!

19

ZakDahdger Mar 24, 2026 +8

I understood that reference

8

2ilie Mar 24, 2026 -12

If it can go on a rocket, it can go to Iran.

-12

FifteenthPen Mar 24, 2026 +7

> Title makes it sound like they teleported it somehow I wonder if they just assumed that what happens when antimatter touches matter was common knowledge.

7

suvlub Mar 25, 2026 +2

It's not? I thought that it's pretty much the number 1 thing people who don't know anything else about antimatter know

2

CMDRZhor Mar 25, 2026 +7

The whole point of the exercise was to prove that the containment system is stable enough to be safely transported in a truck, I believe.

7

axonxorz Mar 24, 2026 +18

Dan Brown in shambles

18

treefox Mar 25, 2026 +4

“They’re waiting for you, Gordon…*in the test chamber.*”

4

[deleted] Mar 24, 2026 +66

[removed]

66

Funkytadualexhaust Mar 24, 2026 +15

Can antimatter be converted to energy?

15

ImTheTractorbeam Mar 24, 2026 +45

Sure! Just add a dash of regular matter.

45

DAVENP0RT Mar 24, 2026 +20

Big badda boom.

20

bluemitersaw Mar 24, 2026 +23

Very very easily. If it interacts with regular matter BOOM! straight to 100% energy. That's part of the difficulty. Hard to make, hard to store, hard to transport.

23

noobsman Mar 25, 2026 +4

Just make a box out of anti matter

4

PhillipsAsunder Mar 25, 2026 +1

Could the reason the universe is expanding and that we don't see much antimatter post Big Bang be due to this?

1

Override9636 Mar 25, 2026 +3

The fact that our universe is mostly matter, even though matter/anti-matter should have been created equally and consequently annihilated itself, is one of the great mysteries of physics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryon_asymmetry

3

shumingliu001 Mar 24, 2026 +19

Someone notify the Vatican Guard asap

19

HalogenFisk Mar 24, 2026 +39

As a life long Trekkie, I read "Transporting" as "Teleporting." Beaming out of this thread.

39

Silly-Ad-6341 Mar 24, 2026 +20

Is antimatter the one that goes boom when it touches something?

20

Lykos1124 Mar 24, 2026 +42

This is one of those things I keep looking up every so often over the years, and today is no different! I looked into the science, and it's something like this. if all these anti protons and an equal number of protons all interacted at once, it would release gamma rays neutrinos (50% of the energy) Total Energy in Joules: \~ 2.766 x 10\^-8 Joules Total Energy in MeV: \~ 172,642 MeV (Mega-electronvolts) [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=172%2C642+MeV](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=172%2C642+MeV) or about 0.17 of the kinetic energy of a flying mosquito (so not harmful in this case) Neutrinos rarely interact with matter and are always passing through us from space, so you won't notice those. The Gamma rays amount is so tiny that no one would notice or be hurt.

42

twenafeesh Mar 24, 2026 +24

I was just idly wondering what 92 anti protons would do if annihilated. Thanks for answering my question before I even asked it

24

Lykos1124 Mar 24, 2026 +6

All good. it's interesting science :D, and the particulars in this case is that it'd be a total energy release not just from those 92, but from the 92 protons that interact with the 92 antiprotons, or 184 hadrons altogether. and with it being so little energy, it probably has the explosive force of a gnat's toot in a hurricane🌪

6

LynxRufus Mar 24, 2026 +6

Yes, but it would take an insane amount of this insanely rare stuff to actually make a big boom. Infinitely easier to use dynamite, nukes, and regular bombs for big booms.

6

zkrp5108 Mar 25, 2026 +5

Supposedly when matter meets antimatter the l they cancel each other IDK what that means though. IDK if it goes boom or makes a fart sound who knows

5

[deleted] Mar 24, 2026 -7

[deleted]

-7

catchmycorn Mar 24, 2026 +5

Bro just watched Tenet

5

Dzugavili Mar 24, 2026 +9

Hm. No. Antimatter moves under gravity the same way, it just has inverted electrical charge.

9

Harknights Mar 24, 2026 +19

lol I thought they invented a transporter like in Star Trek. I was like WTF, that would be ground breaking....not that this isn't important, but this doesn't break the rules of physics.

19

freemysou1 Mar 24, 2026 +10

I cannae change the laws of physics

10

awaniwono Mar 25, 2026 +7

I don't know but "transporting antimatter on a truck" sounds a lot like "storing antimatter on a fuel tank" which is kinda the starting point of Star Trek etc. no?

7

Anxious_Dracula Mar 24, 2026 +1

Seth Brundle approves!

1

Burgoonius Mar 24, 2026 +6

I always get dark matter and anti matter confused

6

WayExcellent5595 Mar 24, 2026 +3

"Wake up mr freeman wake up and smell the ashes"

3

Sea-Jackfruit411 Mar 24, 2026 +4

Didn't they just successfully turn lead into gold too? This is cool as hell. Edit: They did briefly turn lead into gold. [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/03/260313002633.htm](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/03/260313002633.htm)

4

issm Mar 24, 2026 +4

That's been possible for a while. The problem is doing it in a way that's anything close to being economical or useful.

4

solonoctus Mar 25, 2026 +8

Yeah. I don’t think alchemists thought the whole several billion dollar bleeding edge tech installation that involves 27 km of underground rings to make a few atoms of gold from lead was the value proposition they were imagining.

8

Lexx4 Mar 27, 2026 +1

Weird though isn’t it that they thought of that though.

1

tulip-quartz Mar 25, 2026 +4

ITT: people who don’t understand teleporting and transporting are 2 different things

4

PKM_Trainer_Gary Mar 24, 2026 +2

Meanwhile a random soldier teleporting bread:

2

HutchPhD Mar 27, 2026 +1

That's how we discover that we are going to live forever. Sigh... I miss the old TF2 days.

1

JoseSpiknSpan Mar 24, 2026 +1

Now we just need to find a way to boil water with this

1

halfaloafofkungfoo Mar 25, 2026 +1

Steins; Gate bout to be true?

1

WynDWys Mar 25, 2026 +1

Antimatter being transported long distance is the first step to creating a viable warp drive. Flying cars might actually happen!

1

solonoctus Mar 25, 2026 +5

No it’s not. Warp drive theories revolve around dark energy/matter, and are in all likelihood quirks of our incomplete mathematical models of the universe rather than something we could ever actually create. You also wouldn’t want a car powered by annihilation either. One wreck and you’re dealing with Hiroshima level explosions.

5

WynDWys Mar 25, 2026

First step to the kind of energy generation that our current warp drive models, if accurate, would require to be functional. But hey, we'll find out!

0

doormatt314 Mar 25, 2026 +4

Antimatter isn't a very good energy source. Creating it requires *much* more energy than it could generate (laws of thermodynamics and all that), and there's so little natural antimatter in the solar system that collecting it probably won't ever be viable. It's more like a battery -- create antimatter with energy from some other source, then generate power somewhere else. A tremendously inefficient, but tremendously powerful, battery.

4

WynDWys Mar 25, 2026 -1

Isnt an extremely powerful and extremely light battery exactly what's needed for space? It's incredibly inefficient now, but with refinements to the tech used to create it and harness its energy, the efficiency should increase, and with the growth of both renewable energy and fusion, the cost for generation should decrease dramatically. Warp requires absurdly high output, which from my understanding, antimatter has the only feasible means of achieving. That's my basis for saying the ability to transport it in a stable environment is the first step. Just creating it is simply creating the resource, moving it is the first step toward applying the technology toward any purpose beyond research.

-1

dydhaw Mar 25, 2026 +4

We don't know what warp drives would require because we don't know how warp drives would work (assuming you mean something like an Alcubierre drive) or if it's even possible for them to exist in the first place. There are many reasons to believe it isn't possible, because it can imply e.g. exotic matter with negative mass, causality violations, energy concentrations in excess of Schwartzschild limit etc etc. So no, antimatter containment isn't a first step towards warp drives, in the sense that it doesn't make them any more practical than they are(n't). Antimatter drives and "normal" interstellar transport, maybe.

4

SenatorPencilFace Mar 24, 2026 -1

What would be the commercial benefits of this?

-1

zkrp5108 Mar 25, 2026 +4

It's not about commercial products lol, they want to study these particles at other facilities this proves they can be transported. On another note what happens when you crash and spill antimatter?

4

SenatorPencilFace Mar 25, 2026 +2

So this will make researching antimatter easier?

2

Pastramiboy86 Mar 25, 2026 +1

It's very energetic in a particle physics sense, but 92 antiprotons annihilating wouldn't even be noticable at human scales. I think it would produce something like 0.00001 joules of energy.

1

[deleted] Mar 25, 2026 -2

[deleted]

-2

Ithalan Mar 25, 2026 +2

Some quick searching claims that the maximum transport capacity of the BASE-STEP device (which in itself weighs about 1 ton) is 1000 anti-protons or so. Even if those anti-protons annihilate all at once, the energy release is going to be practically unnoticeable (it would take a billion anti-protons annihilating to release just 1 Joule). So no, antimatter warheads are not happening anytime soon.

2

BASE experiment at CERN succeeds in transporting antimatter

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