CERN HST2019 - Day 10

It's so sad that today was the last day of site visits and our presentations are done tomorrow morning 😢 We had wonderful presentations from Alessandra Gnecchi and Roland Jansky on theoretical physics and data analysis, respectively, but it was Michael Doser who stole the show this morning with his talk on antimatter!  Michael's presentation was absolutely fascinating and I was afraid to look away as he spoke quickly and did everything on old school blackboards!  He covered many topics and made us question things we take for granted.  If we aren't antimatter could any of the other planets or the Sun itself be made from antimatter?  It's not as crazy as it sounds since there is a vacuum separation between us the other planets and the Sun and so there wouldn't be any matter-antimatter annihilation occurring.  Turns out we have a way of testing that and, in fact, everything we recognize is typical matter.  We then looked at the work being done at CERN so that they can study antimatter.  Antimatter is such a strange thing in that it has all of the exact same physical properties as regular matter, but if it comes into contact with regular matter they annihilate completely.  That makes this stuff so interesting, but don't worry, the idea of weaponizing antimatter is not in the realm of reality since it would take tens of thousands of years just to create enough to have the same destructive power as a small nuclear weapon.  Instead, if we can successfully generate small quantities and trap it then we could use antimatter as a new method of radiation therapy.  This new anti-proton (an antimatter proton ie. a proton with a negative charge instead of positive) therapy would have higher energies than either gamma therapy or proton therapy.  First, let me rewind a bit.  With gamma therapy it is hard to control since the energy curve starts high and dissipates over depth which means that if there is a tumor that is being treated with this method then the gamma beam will destroy all of the cells between where it enters and where it hits the tumor cells.  Obviously, this does the job, but it's certainly not ideal.  Proton therapy can be tuned and has an energy profile that starts low, has a peak (which we can adjust depending on the depth at which the tumor is), and then drops off to nothing.  This allows us to target a tumor, hitting it with the maximum energy, while the cells in between are very minimally damaged (they can usually heal from this damage in a short time).  Even better though is anti-proton therapy.  This energy profile can be tuned, similar to proton therapy, but has a much higher energy peak that gives it the ability to completely destroy the tumor cells by rupturing the nucleus and scattering particles.  The benefit here isn't in terms of the treatment, but instead the fact that we can use a detector to see some of the scattered particles and this will give us real-time imaging as we kill the cancer cells so we know immediately if we missed anything.  This could be tremendous in terms of future cancer treatment, but the cost of this technology is high and there aren't any places that are looking at building the devices or performing clinical trials yet.  It's sometimes disappointing when you hear that they have developed this amazing technology that can save so many lives, but that it is money the willingness of corporations to invest in it that stands in the way.



We followed up on Michael's talk with a trip to LEIR (the Low Energy Ion Ring) and the Antimatter Factory!  This was amazing as we got to take a good look at a complete particle accelerator (LEIR) and how they decelerate and trap antimatter (at the Antimatter Decelerator).  The technologies that are developed here and their possible uses still blow my mind!  In LEIR they take lead atoms and strip away all of the electrons before putting them into the LHC and colliding the massive lead nuclei into each other.  This creates a quark-gluon plasma, similar to what existed in the universe just moments after the Big Bang!  Physicists here then try to study this quark-gluon plasma to get a better understanding of the early universe.

It's hard to believe that we are almost finished this incredible program and I hope that one day I will get to come back.  In the next couple years though, I am hoping to get to attend the EinsteinPlus program at the Perimeter Institute in Ontario, the LIGO Teacher Programme, and the Teacher's Workshop at Canada Light Source.