For Herb Nehouse, may he rest in peace, Nature, 7159, 13 Sep '07 reports a Positronium atom which under these newly described experimental conditions might lead to the development of the "dread annihilation γ-ray laser."(1)
"It has been known for many years that an electron and its antiparticle, the positron, can together form a metastable hydrogen-like atom, positronium (Ps). (2) It was predicted that two Ps atoms may combine to form di-positronium (Ps2), but this molecule has not been observed unambiguously: until now(3) ---- Using a more intense positron source, it may be possible to form a Bose-Einstein condensate of Ps2 molecules, which would be of significant fundamental interest and a milestone on the path to produce an annihilation γ-ray laser."(4) Nature 7159; p ix, 153, 195
Imagine, if you will the advantages of such a device in Iraq --- concealed in a ball point pen, I can picture the repatriated and educated Iraqi woman looking up from her living-room writing desk as the black hooded -- what, terrorists, religious police, the Prime Minister’s or Sadar’s militia -- burst into her house shouting anti sectarian epitaphs.
Cocking her head jauntily, “Strange you should stop by, Allah be praised, I was just thinking about you,” clicking her ball point pen with her right thumb. “There would be seven of you wouldn’t there, Allah be praised,” sweeping the room with her annihilation γ-ray laser.
And there on the floor lay twice seven bloodlessly cauterized and sagitally divided terrorists. The murmurs of amazement could be heard from the street through the open door and the newly fenestrated horizontal slot across the south living-room wall for the mail of course.
1 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6991030.stm
2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose-Einstein_condensate
3 http://www.nature.com/podcast
4 The electron and antimater positron annihilate into photons with an energy of 1,022 keV!
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