I wonder what Stan Lee has to say about this.

You mean if you point this laser at me I won't become the Hulk? How disappointing.

Article has a MAJOR error, but BBC doesn't accept comments:

These short-lived, hydrogen-like atoms consist of an electron and a positron, a positively charged antiparticle.

Uh, no. You mean antiproton, not positron. A positron is a negatively-charged electron.

Tough to make an atom out of two "electrons"...

addendum

...as the positron & electron mutually annihilate each other!

praise be to CTHULHU!!!
im really sick of my neighbor.
My original plan was ruined when the eagle scout was stopped in his mission to acquire 1000 fire alarms.

I'm just glad we're getting this done before the Borg reach Earth.

Uh, no. The bongtrons and bon-bons collide with anti-hardons and the the laser goes "zzt." Sheesh.

The electron-positron system IS hydrogen-like in many senses -- the positron looks like a low-mass version of the proton (except that it can also annihilate the electron) but before the annihilation, the positron and electron orbit the common centre of mass in the same fashion as in the hydrogen atom.

When you look at the positron-electron system with a spectrometer, it has all the normal optical transitions seen in hydrogen, just occurring at half the frequency due to the reduced mass.

perhaps they could somehow prepare long-lived 1s-2s spin singlet positronium atoms, then resonantly drive the a transition to put everything in the ground state, sort-of a Lamb shift experiment on steroids?

"Dr David Cassidy of the University of California"

While I'm sure it's not as glamourous as "The Partidge Family" I'm glad that he is making something of himself. I wonder, what's it like, being the world's dreamiest physicist?

Um, mujadaddy, your comment is wrong. Electrons are normally negatively charged, so positrons (which are anti-electrons) are positively charged. Protons are normally positive, so antiprotons are negative.

But you're right, antihydrogen (which I guess they're calling positronium? Maybe?) is one positron orbiting one antiproton. If you shoot an electron at a positron, you get some gamma rays, but nothing long-lasting.

Actually, MUJADADDY is wrong. You *can* make positronium ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positronium ) from an electron and a positron. The key is they must be oppositely charged. See also expanded article on exotic-atoms ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_atom )

Actually, positronium is a bound state of a positron and an electron. mujadaddy, you're thinking of anti-hydrogen.

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/Positronium.html

Remember, kids! Unstable != Non-existant !

Lasers make everything better.

So, is this a laser that uses unspecified means to annihilate gamma rays or a laser that uses gamma rays to annihilate unspecified targets?

#10, it's a laser (actually a gaser) that uses particle annihilation to generate gamma rays. Google on gamma ray annihilation laser.

I can't wait until this gets a proper test on a house full of popcorn!

When I was a few weeks old, my parents took me to my grandparents' restaurant in Greenwich Village.

One of the beatnik patrons told them to "Raise him as a death-ray repairman."

So, I guess the whole career in software development was a temporary thing until this turned up.

Destiny, man. You can't avoid it.

We're going to need some really big sharks to mount these lasers on.....

Alright! Move over Blu-Ray, get ready for G-Ray! So crisp and vivid and super amazingly powerful it will burn a hole in your TV!

I like how in the linked article people are interested in 'household' applications for this technology...I mean, I was always under the impression that radiation (of a dangerous nature) is something you generally don't want around you, let alone in your home.

You could probably also use the laser to super-size normals sharks. See, this technology is already doing double-duty.

The gamma-ray annihilation laser is old news, 21 years old.
Here's a Bibtex entry for an Abstract from 1986, Harvard, NASA...

@ARTICLE{1986LPB.....4..577L,
author = {{Loeb}, A. and {Eliezer}, S.},
title = "{A gamma ray laser based on induced annihilation of electron-positron pairs.}",
journal = {Laser and Particle Beams},
year = 1986,
volume = 4,
pages = {577-587},
adsurl = {http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1986LPB.....4..577L},
adsnote = {Provided by the Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System}

Well, apparently I am.

But forgive me for thinking that a 142 nanosecond-lifetime particle with 2x(9.1093826(16) × 10−31 kg) mass was not an atom.

Wikipedia in fact refers to it as an 'exotic atom' ... and this 'atom' wouldn't have a nucleus, just a pos and neg orbital cloud. Very counterintuitive.

Has anyone heard anything about a Life-Ray???