Antimatter opens up surprising questions
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Short intro
Turns out our Universe is made up of particles and antiparticles. Antiparticles are basically the same as ordinary particles except that they have an opposite charge.
For a long time we were convinced that everything in the Universe is made up of same type of particles. Then in the 90s scientists discovered that for every particle there is a corresponding antiparticle.
For example electron's antimatter counterpart is called positron, and just as ordinary matter positron and antimatter proton called antiproton can form antihydrogen.
Antihydrogen was first detected in 90s, and successfully trapped using vacuum, magnetic fields and cooling in 2010.
When ordinary matter and antimatter touch, they annihilate and turn into pure energy following the Einstein's famous equation E = mc^2
As long as you keep antimatter separated from matter by vacuum nothing happens.
Antimatter planets in our Solar system?
What if not all of the planets in our Solar system are made of ordinary matter?
What if some planet is composed out of antimatter?
They are separated from each other by vacuum, preventing them to annihilate and vanish in the cloud of pure violent energy.
There is no way we can tell if a planet or object in space is antimatter or not. Not before we approach close enough to cause explosion.
Or maybe there is way to detect antimatter objects, comments are welcome!
Photon, for example, will annihilate only with anti-photon, if we shoot a laser beam of anti-photons from Jupiter, will we be able to see them on Earth?
Antimatter asteroids and commets?
What if there is an antimatter asteroid heading to Earth. In this case we could be easily deceived by the size of an asteroid, thinking for example that it is too small to cause any serious damage. But we don't count for it's destructive power when antimatter from asteroid collide with matter on Earth. Annihilation will in fact start as soon it enters the upper layers of Earths atmosphere.
Antimatter aliens?
What if we encounter and alien civilization made of antimatter? How would we get in touch with them :D
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