- 2679 - ANTIMATTER - what happens when we find it? One of the biggest mysteries in Physics remains, why is there more matter than antimatter? The Conservation of Energy tells us that at the time of the Big Bang, when matter was first created from energy, there should have been equal amounts of matter and antimatter created.
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--------------------- 2679 - ANTIMATTER - what happens when we find it?
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- When matter and antimatter come back together again they annihilate each other and everything returns back to energy again, according to E = mc^2, Energy is Conserved. Energy and matter are to forms of the same thing , and matter and antimatter can not live together. They must return to energy.
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- Antimatter is not found naturally on Earth. Exceptions are, very briefly, during radioactive decay and when Cosmic Rays collide with atoms in the upper atmosphere. Also, very small amounts of antimatter, such as anti-hydrogen, can be produced in our particle accelerators. The small amount of antimatter produced by the largest particle accelerator, CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, would light a 100 watt bulb for only 3 seconds.
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- Anti-hydrogen produced at CERN has one positron and one antiproton in each atom. If the atoms remain suspended in a perfect vacuum they survive indefinitely. However, if the anti-hydrogen comes in contact with ordinary matter, such as the walls of a container, the atoms quickly annihilate each other and turn into energy in the form of gamma ray radiation and high energy particles called pions. The pions decay quickly into muons, neutrinos, positrons, and electrons. It all happens in a flash.
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- Antimatter is made of 12 fundamental anti-particles. Just as matter is made of 12 fundamental particles. The Standard Model for Particle Physics defines all matter being made of 6 varieties of quarks and 6 varieties of leptons. Quarks come in threes and make up protons and neutrons. Leptons come in three varieties of electrons and three varieties of neutrinos. So the 12 fundamental particles make up “ordinary matter”.
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- The Standard model also includes the anti-particles for each of these fundamental particles of matter. A total of 24 fundamental particles with mass. Particles and anti-particles have the same mass but opposite signs of charge. For example, the electron has a negative charge and the positron has the same mass but carries a positive charge. If an electron and a positron collide they vaporize in a flash of energy.
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- The Standard Model does include four “force carrying” particles, the photons, W-Z bosons, gluons, and gravitons but these are massless and only travel at the speed of light. Since they are massless they have no anti-particle counterpart.
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- In 1928 Paul Dirac predicted that anti-particles existed. He developed equations of motion for the waveforms of electrons using Einstein’s theory of relativity. His equations required that there be negative electrons as well as positive electrons. Therefore he predicted that a positive electron twin of the same mass must exist. It was in the math.
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In 1932 this particle was actually discovered in cloud chambers that were studying cosmic ray collisions in the upper atmosphere. The first anti-particle was called a positron. In 1955 the antiproton was discovered. In 1956 the anti-neutron was discovered. In 1995 the anti-hydrogen atom was created.
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- Today antiprotons are routinely produced in particle accelerators. Protons traveling at near light speed are smashed into a block of copper or iridium metal. ( Any material would work as a target. It is just that these are easy to cool and beefsteak would be too sloppy.)
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- The energetic protons are stopped so abruptly very high temperatures are created. Temperatures high enough to create matter-antimatter pairs. The anti-protons with their negative charge are pulled off from the collision using powerful magnets that direct the beam of anti-protons into their experiments.
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- Positrons are created by radioactive decay and are used in PET scans, or brain scans for medical diagnoses. PET scans are “Positron Emission Topography“. The positrons are injected into the body. They then annihilate electrons in nearby atoms in the brain.
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- The energy emerges as two gamma rays that shoot off in opposite directions at 510,000 electron volts. The angles of projection are precisely aligned to conserve the angular momentum.
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- The gamma ray beams are detected in a ring of detectors very similar to a particle accelerator. The speed and angles are recorded in a computer and topography techniques are used to reconstruct an image of the brain and show the doctors if a tumor is there.
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- No one has ever observed the production of a particle or an anti-particle by themselves. They always come in pairs. To create a pair you need lots of energy. Your body is made of ordinary matter particles. These particles have been around for a long time. In fact, they were created 13,700,000,000 years ago.
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- These particles were created from the energy of the Big Bang. At that time they were created as pairs. An equal number of particles and anti-particles were produced. But, somehow, and we don’t know how, things got lopsided. When the annihilation of particle/antiparticle were over a small amount of matter was left over.
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- That is what everything we know is made of, matter, but we do not know what happened to the anti-matter Maybe there was an anti-gravity and the anti-matter shot off to form some other anti-Universe. Of course aliens in an anti-Universe would think they were ordinary matter and we were made of anti-matter. If you ever meet, just don’t shake hands with these guys.
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- If there were not this lopsided result with the Big Bang all matter would not exist the and Universe would consist only of light radiation in empty space.
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- When electrons and positrons annihilate each other they change into photons. In other words fermions change into bosons. Or, in other words mass changes into energy. We know that because E=mc^2.
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------------------------------ Energy = mass * 90,000,000,000,000,000.
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------------------------------ Energy = kilograms * meters^2 /seconds^2.
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------------------------------ Force = mass * acceleration
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------------------------------ Force = kilograms * meters / second^2
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------------------------------ Energy = Force * Distance
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- A particle thought to be moving faster than the speed of light, by another observer would be seen as a particle traveling backward in time and having the opposite charge. So, according to Richard Feynman, professor at Caltech, a positron can be viewed as an electron traveling backwards in time. Sorry, I can’t explain that one. Over my head.
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- Physicists believe that other than having an opposite charge antimatter follows all the laws of physics the same as matter. But it is hard to prove. One piece of evidence comes from the Supernova explosion 1987A.
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- Astronomers detecting neutrinos and anti-neutrinos from this explosion found them to be arriving Earth at the same time. The Supernova is 164,000 lightyears away. If gravity was affecting matter differently than anti-matter then we would not expect both types of neutrinos to arrive simultaneously.
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- Particle physicists are studying antimatter to learn if all the laws equally apply. We still don’t know for sure.
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- The starship Enterprise in Star Trek is powered by matter- antimatter fuel. It would be the ideal fuel. There is no better efficiency that creating matter into 100% energy. Especially with E=mc^2.
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- One kilogram would give you 90,000,000,000,000,000 kilogram*meter^2 / second^2 of energy. One ounce would light every light bulb in the United States for 24 hours. A kilogram*meter^2 / second^2 is a joule of energy and a joule is a watt of energy per second. We have just not figured how to mine antimatter yet.
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--------------------------------- To learn more about Antimatter see Reviews:
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- 2562 - ANTIMATTER - mystery in physics? Why is there more matter than antimatter? The Conservation of Energy tells us that at the time of the Big Bang, when matter was first created from energy, there should have been equal amounts of matter and antimatter created. When matter and antimatter come back together again they annihilate each other and everything returns back to energy again, according to E=mc^2, Energy is Conserved.
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- 2561 - ANTIMATTER BLACKHOLES - what happens when they meet? Antimatter is not science fiction, it is all around us. Antimatter is a mass that has the opposite electric charge but otherwise is exactly the same as ordinary matter, its counterpart. What makes antimatter fascinating is that when it meets up with matter the two annihilate each other back into energy, according to E = mc^2.
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- 2560 - ANTIMATTER - is all around us? Anti-matter is a term that most people relate to science fiction. It is the ultimate fuel used to power space ships traveling at near light speed. Few people realize that anti-matter is all around us, all the time, everyday. Anti-matter is created naturally in nature through radioactivity.
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- 2376 - ANTI-MATTER - Why does it exist? Present theory suggests that if particles outnumbered antiparticles in the Big Bang by as little as one part in 100 million, then the present universe could be explained by those extra particles that were not annihilated by an antiparticle counterpart.
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- 2244 - Matter is a mystery that we do not know how to explain. When the Big Bang occurred, our standard model predicts that there should have been an equal amount of matter and antimatter created. If it all came from nothing it has to add up to nothing. There needs to be equal amounts of matter and antimatter.
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- 1892 - Energy is converted into matter every day in our upper atmosphere.
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- 1746 - Does antimatter really exist?
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- 1393 - Does antimatter really exist? We know that the center of our Milky Way Galaxy is still producing antimatter, and the resulting Gamma Rays.
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- 1303 - Why look for antimatter in he Antarctic.
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- 1272 - Teaching the science of antimatter.
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- 1149 - Why does matter outnumber antimatter?
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- 971 - Notes from lecture about the Standard Linear Accelerator lecture on antimatter.
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- 607 - Antimatter is all around us.
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- March 25, 2020 730 2679
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--------------------- Wednesday, March 25, 2020 -------------------------
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