Antimatter, the evil-twin-like opposite to every particle in the universe, is pretty wild stuff. While in the sci-fi world it powers warp drives, here in the frustrating confines of reality we still haven’t figured out how to harness it. But thanks to some mad scientists at the Large Hadron Collider, now we know what antimatter sounds like. Sorta.
This video captures the sound of two types of particle, B0 and B0s, as they switch back and forth between their matter and antimatter states. Since this switch happens 3 million times a second, the audio had to be geared down to super slow-mo to hit a frequency our puny human ears can comprehend. The first loud peak is the sound of B0 particles switching, followed by the much more subtle sound of B0s.
So yeah, it sorta sounds like white noise. But so did the transmissions in the movie Contact, to the simple-minded doubters who weren’t adventurous enough to leave their terrestrial lives. Listen closely, folks. That could be the sound of your great-grandkid’s faster-than-light spacecraft. [PhysOrg]