"$80MM"

Is dollars millimeters a new unit?

MM obviously stands for MegaMillion, and with the $ the number is clearly in hexadecimal, so the value represented is 120 MegaMillions. With the current value of the MegaMillion jackpot in excess of 242 Million USD, NYC was therefore ripped off for over 29 Trillion USD.

Clearly.

Definitely not, otherwise how are they supposed to get First Post?

Ahh, I understand the confusion now. I was trying to convey the fact that the anti-hydrogen wasn't around as anti-hydrogen for very long in just a few words. I should have said something to the effect of 'collided with the container' to be more exact.

I had thought of this issue for a few seconds when typing the post, but decided that as the anti-hydrogen atom was a composite of a antiproton and a positron, you could very well destroy it without destroying the composite pieces merely by separating them, thus allowing me a bit of liberty to simplify my diction.

I think the temporary capture of antiprotons and antielectrons has been achieved before

You are correct. For example the Fermilab Antiproton Source, which creates antiprotons and stores them, has been in operation since 1985 [1], while the Fermilab Recycler has held onto a continuous stash of antiprotons for over a month [2]. And these are by no means the very first machines to capture and store antimatter, I'd have to dig though the history a bit more to find an earlier example.

Production of Anti-hydrogen (antiproton orbited by a positron) seems to have been achieved in 1995 at CERN, with Fermilab confirming production in 1997 [3]. But those atoms were destroyed immediately after being created, this is the first time I've heard of anyone successfully storing anti-hydrogen for any long period of time. So yes, the headline is misleading, we've been capturing antimatter for quite some time, it's the fact that you are capturing the neutrally charged anti-hydrogen (antiproton -1, positron +1, total = 0) that's the real news.

Here's around the same time in IR, but for a longer duration (~900 KB gif). Quite a bit easier to see.

Source: http://goes.gsfc.nasa.gov/goeswest-lzw/california/ir5/ 1011081645G11I05.tif 08-Nov-2010 12:02 to 1011090100G11I05.tif 08-Nov-2010 20:24

The Paper on arXiv, for the most of us who don't have PRL access: Event Excess in the MiniBooNE Search for Vu -> Ve Oscillations

Cthulhu for President. Why vote for a lesser evil?

The reason we don't have a lot of production is no one has put together a system dedicated to making antimatter.

But we do, the Fermilab Antiproton Source. By my calculations, it currently has about an order of magnitude higher production rate than the parent's prediction (which originally comes from an un-sourced section of the wikipedia article on antimatter).

Using the current process it would take 2 billion years to produce 1 gram of anti-hydrogen

We are much better at making anti-protons. Fermilab's Antiproton source can regularly do 25*10^10 antiprotons an hour, with rates topping out at 28*10^10 per hour (sustained).

So you could probably manage one gram in 'only' 250 million years with what we have built today. However, the best antiproton storage machine has only held 540*10^10 antiprotons at the same time, so there'd need to be an improvement in storage.

I googled for a bit and found three LCARS iPad lookalikes so far:

• Captain's Blog
• LCARS Internet Media Reader
• STARSS

Sweet, I'll put that right after "Time's Person of the Year 2006".

My bad, my humor sensor is broken today. Commented to remove said moderation.

Shock! horror! Apple are using their own website to push Safari and claim that their own browsers are ahead of the game on standards support? The bastards!!!

Shhh! You're interrupting the two minutes' hate!

The "star filters" you mention are actually diffraction spikes caused by the rods that support the secondary mirror of the telescope. They are an intrinsic quality of the telescope. If you look at the left side of this image of the Hubble under construction you can see three (of the four) black spokes that connect the outer cylindrical support to the cylinder in the middle (this is where the secondary mirror is mounted to). It is the light diffracting off of these spokes that cause the starburst pattern that you noticed.

Damn it! You tricked me into reading the article!