[ExI] positronium

[Damien Broderick]

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1580

<< In free space, two atoms of positronium cannot combine together, 
because they have such excess energy that they simply fly apart 
again. Writing in the British journal Nature today, University of 
California Riverside physicists David Cassidy and Allen Mills 
describe how they overcame this obstacle to forge the world's first 
Ps2 in laboratory conditions.

They did it by first creating a special trap that confined some 20 
million positrons, which were then focussed in a nano-second blast 
onto the surface of porous silica.

Holed up within the pores, the positrons captured electrons to form 
atoms of positronium, which in turn linked up to form around 100,000 
two-atom molecules before annilation.

The silica walls of the pores were the key to the success, as they 
absorbed the excess energy of the atoms, allowing them to wed, albeit 
fleetingly. Evidence that the long-sought molecules had been created, 
comes from a tell-tale temperature curve of gamma rays released by 
the annihilation.>>

I wonder if those silica walls could be termed... positronic branes.

(boom boom)