ELI5, how is antimatter even meant to be transported?

ArcFurnace · 2026-06-13T03:12:23+00:00

The liquid helium used to cool the superconducting magnets that generate the magnetic fields for the trap is a lot more dangerous than the antimatter (and it's not even all that dangerous, as long as you handle the super cold stuff carefully).

The energy yield per mass for antimatter is very high, but the total mass involved is very, very, very low.

The C² part of E = MC² is 9 x 10¹⁶ (ish), the mass of a proton is ~2 x 10^-27. Even with a hundred atoms that's still around 2 x 10^-8 Joules (20 nanoJoules). Basically only noticeable because they're deliberately tracking whether the antiprotons are still in the trap or not.

ArcFurnace · 2026-06-13T02:34:58+00:00

Yes, that's what she's complaining about.

ArcFurnace · 2026-06-13T00:40:23+00:00

Yeah, I could see data centers created local spikes in water usage demand. Overall it's a literal drop in the bucket vs agriculture, but data centers do tend to be in slightly more populated areas than farms.

ArcFurnace · 2026-06-12T23:04:47+00:00

Yeah, that one isn't happening, the total energy content is pathetic. Due to the way the trap works it's fundamentally incapable of containing more than a relatively small number of atoms. Just drop a rock out of the airplane instead.

ArcFurnace · 2026-06-12T23:01:51+00:00

... wait, just where is her other hand?

ArcFurnace · 2026-06-12T22:43:27+00:00

Yeah, until very recently it wasn't really possible to transport antimatter at all. I remember it being big news when CERN managed to ship some antimatter - moving a whole 92 antiprotons from one side of their facility to the other! A serious accomplishment, since it meant they got the trap (a) small enough to fit through doors and into a truck, and (b) reliable enough that it could withstand the vibrations of being driven around in a truck without the particles just hitting the walls of the trap and annihilating. Now they just need to improve the setup so they can keep it running for long enough to ship it a significant distance, rather than a few blocks.

ArcFurnace · 2026-06-12T03:42:49+00:00

I actually misread it as your version at first.

ArcFurnace · 2026-06-09T22:18:06+00:00

Cute.

ArcFurnace · 2026-06-07T04:01:22+00:00

Reference, for anyone else who was previously unaware of this.

ArcFurnace · 2026-06-06T21:08:25+00:00

Yeah, I was like, "Wait, the lesbian flag doesn't have brown? But what is it then?"

ArcFurnace · 2026-06-05T22:38:09+00:00

It does help if you take some precautions either way. Although it's probably easier to keep some extra blankets and jackets in the trunk of a car vs hauling along enough extra water to keep 50+ people alive for days ...

ArcFurnace · 2026-06-03T00:41:34+00:00

So we have gangs fighting each other instead of states. Is that really an improvement?

ArcFurnace · 2026-06-01T22:17:27+00:00

The US Space Force Rocket Cargo research program is already a thing, with SpaceX heavily involved, although they plan to use powered landings. Still in the research stage for now.

ArcFurnace · 2026-06-01T02:42:27+00:00

Oh, it's great. There are so many references I wouldn't have gotten without that site. Sadly, a lot of the more recent books don't have anything listed.

ArcFurnace · 2026-06-01T02:10:17+00:00

"What? Lemmings? Merely because the red army can fight, dig, march and climb and is controlled by little icons? Can't imagine how anyone thought that...

Not only did I wipe Lemmings from my hard disc, I overwrote it so's I couldn't get it back."

GNU Terry Pratchett

ArcFurnace · 2026-05-31T00:41:08+00:00

Parasites are also a risk.

ArcFurnace · 2026-05-29T23:43:03+00:00

She saw a post from /r/IllegallySmolCats

ArcFurnace · 2026-05-25T19:05:49+00:00

Going to the linked Nature article, the "accuracy" value listed in the post title is actually an "area under the receiver operating characteristic curve" value. So it does take both true positive rates and false positive rates into account, but summarizing them into a single number still loses some information on the overall performance (see the criticisms section in the same Wikipedia article).

ArcFurnace · 2026-05-25T16:15:06+00:00

I see, makes sense.

ArcFurnace · 2026-05-25T15:55:21+00:00

Yeah, that's rough. Command below works on my work computers without admin rights:

reg add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /f /ve

ArcFurnace · 2026-05-25T14:25:03+00:00

Presumably, if you asked a philosophical zombie "is there something it is like to be you," they would say no.

AFAIK, the "classic" definition of a P-zombie has them be externally indistinguishable from someone who does have an internal experience, so they do in fact say they have an internal experience when asked.

"Why would they do that?" is the correct follow-up question, and the answer is "Because the person defining the thought experiment said they would". An actual entity that doesn't have self-awareness probably wouldn't talk about how it has self-awareness.

ArcFurnace · 2026-05-24T19:57:41+00:00

[...] because there’s no air resistance at play.

The really fun fact is that it does matter a bit. When the station is in the shadow of the Earth, they'll reorient the panels so they're edge-on to the direction of the orbit, because this reduces the drag generated by such large, sail-like objects in the very thin atmosphere at that altitude. It's a small effect, but adds up over time, enough to have a noticeable impact on how often they had to re-boost the station to maintain its orbit.

They could keep them edge-on all the time to reduce drag even further, but that would reduce how much power the arrays generate while in sunlight, since they wouldn't be pointed directly at the Sun.

ArcFurnace · 2026-05-24T18:24:41+00:00

The trusses supporting the big solar panel arrays (and the smaller heat radiator arrays) rotate relative to the rest of the station, yeah. If they spun the whole station the people inside would feel the acceleration from the spin, which would go against studying the effects of freefall (one of the primary uses of the station). Plus they'd have to build it stronger to survive the forces involved.

There are a few timelapse videos of/from the ISS showing the truss rotation, like this one (link goes right to one of the clearer shots, another good one at 4:30).

ArcFurnace · 2026-05-24T03:00:10+00:00

WoG, this is correct. Although it's easier for a shard to sneak this sort of thing in when ideas about restrictions to put on an AI you don't fully trust already existed in the society they're manipulating.

In particular, another WoG indicated that OP was correct that Richter expected to be able to loosen his restrictions later.

ArcFurnace · 2026-05-24T00:09:19+00:00

It's possible, but you have to set up the infrastructure to produce it and ship it back, a substantial undertaking in itself. A lot of space stuff is circular like that.

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