Antimatter Bank Rolling Out the Dough

A conceptual artist rolls out an intriguing statement on our culture and economy as he prepares to open the doors to The First Bank of Antimatter in San Francisco. Working diligently, Jonathon Keats is making sure that enough anti-currency gets printed and becomes available for circulation in advance of the November 12 opening.

We learn of Keats and his bold project courtesy of LiveScience. At the heart of his latest project (his past works have involved the manufacturing of create-your-own universe kits) is an impassioned statement on our cultural values regarding wealth and work, riding shotgun with a big dose of particle physics.

As Keats explains to LiveScience:

"Economic equilibrium is upset by our unbalanced pursuit of material wealth. My plan is to offset materialism with modern science, by exploiting the economic potential of antimatter, which is the physical opposite of anything made with atoms, from luxury condos to private jets."

The anti-bucks that Keats is currently printing up will be issued in denominations of between 10,000 and 1,000,000 positrons. Playing upon the perceived material underpinnings of modern behavior, Keats has selected the positron as the unit of his currency. The positron may be understood as the basic elemental building block of antimatter, which annihilates matter upon contact.

And in keeping with the responsible design and issuance of currency, Keats will be backing up his bills not with gold, nor even with antimony, but with a reserve of antimatter to be kept securely on the premises, generated through the low-level radioactive decay of an isotope of potassium.

With equal parts tongue-in-cheek and surgical social insight, Keats gives additional basis for his current work to LiveScience:

“We want our customers to be confident that the antimatter is available on demand, but we're advising clients to conduct transactions strictly in paper currency. The paper is cotton rag, archival enough to survive economic Armageddon. It's an essential asset in any balanced portfolio. Antimatter is a natural haven for wealth when everything becomes worthless."

The bank, as such, opens for business in an opening reception for the exhibit at San Francisco’s Modernism Gallery on November 12.

Public domain image, via Wikimedia Commons (color inverted by author)