🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan7.184016.1@fnala.fnal.gov> higgins@fnala.fnal.gov (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes:
>> ... There are *NO* fundamental barriers that
>> anyone has been able to find.  It's purely a matter of scaling up and
>> optimizing the hardware -- the existing accelerators are optimized for
>> production of Nobel prizes, not bulk antimatter...
>
>I don't appreciate the gratuitous sneer at the people who sweated to
>get the production rates *this* high.  They solved difficult
>engineering problems and had to make use of technology available at
>HEP labs rather than some blue-sky paper scheme.  And, yes, Simon van
>der Meer did win a Nobel prize for stochastic cooling, an essential
>process in the storage of antiprotons.  So what?

I can't vouch for the exact wording, but the basic comment is from
Robert Forward.  I never saw a good explanation of the details, and
probably wouldn't have retained them if so -- an accelerator expert
I'm not -- but my dim recollection is that the existing systems lose
a good many antiprotons because of wanting a relatively narrow range
of energies, so the antiprotons can be stored and accelerated easily.
They're optimized for their end use -- high-energy particle physics --
not for maximum efficiency in antimatter production.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry