What Is Antimatter ?
Everyone knows that the whole world is made of matter , the stars the planets , water , rocks , me and you , we are all made of matter . But what's antimatter ? Antimatter is a material composed of antiparticles . Every particle we know has an antiparticle that is identical to its particle but with the opposite charge . That mean antiproton , is the antiparticle of the proton , and the positron or antielectron is the antiparticle of the electron , and so on ... Since matter and antimatter have opposite charge , the antielectron would be positively charged because the electron is negatively charged , and the same for all particles , proton is positive while antiproton is negative .
What happen when matter and antimatter meet ?
Let's simplify it to basic mathematics . The equation x2 = 4 has two solutions : +2 and -2 , and when they meet they disappear leaving a 0 . The same is for matter and antimatter , they have the same mass and the same properties but with different charges , and when they meet they annihilate leaving a burst of light caused by the energy of E=mc2
History of Antimatter
The British physicist Paul Dirac first predicted the presence of antimatter when he was trying to combine the theory of relativity with quantum mechanics . And in August 2, 1932 Caltech physicist Carl Anderson discovered the positron , which is the antiparticle of electron (antielectron) , it was the first particle of antimatter to be identified , for which he won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1936
How Carl Anderson discovered the positron ?
Carl Anderson built a cloud chamber , his goal was to know the composition of cosmic rays ( Cosmic rays are high-energy radiation that can produce secondary particles when it meets the earth atmosphere ) . So Anderson placed a magnet , to know charge of particle that pass in , and he placed a lead plate to slow down the particle that pass through , so he was able to take a photograph of the tracks taken by cosmic ray particles . The curve of the trajectory indicated that the particle was positively charged , but it was less massive than a proton , it is positively charged but it cannot be a proton , so what is that particle ? Physicists thought they discovered a new particle , a positively charged electron and gave it the name " positron " . But Anderson realized that the positron is the same as electron but with opposite charge , and he knew it was an antiparticle that Paul Dirac had predicted in 1931 .
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Anti mater= dark energy , i believe that thy do not have the same mass, i liked the topic. more information are needed to be added.
Thanks
My next post will be on how Antimatter is created , keep following !
By the way , antimatter is not dark energy , the Universe is composed of 71.4% dark energy 24% dark matter and 4.6% ordinary matter , that means all planets moons suns and celestial bodies are within those 4.6% . Antimatter and dark energy are two different concepts . When the Big Bang occurred there was more matter than antimatter and physicists believe that all the antimatter annihilated with the big amount of matter and everything left was the rest of the matter , so dark energy can't be antimatter because there is more dark energy(71.4%) than matter (4.6%) and if there is more antimatter than matter the Universe wouldn't exist because all the matter would be annihilated .
Physicists believe that when the big bang occurred the same amount of matter and antimatter should be created but everything we see in the universe is made of matter , there is no antimatter , so one of the most challenging and mysterious problem in physics is to know where is the rest of the antimatter or why did the universe create more matter than antimatter , it is a long journey into physics , all we can say now is that dark energy is not antimatter !