What happens when "matter" interacts with "antimatter"?

Question

I read in one of the feynman book that for some analysis they assume that out of vacuum a pair of particle and anti-particle is created.......so does it imply that when "matter" and "antimatter" meet they just annihilate each other and ther is no release of energy?

Answer 1

Only if the pair were created from a vacuum. If the pair were created from real (as opposed to virtual) particles, they would annihilate with large release of energy.

Postscript, for a subsequent responder: a particle and antiparticle can be created out of "nothing" -- the quantum-mechanical vacuum. The Uncertainty Principle is at work here -- the energy can not be universally zero for infinite time. See Hawking's A Short History of Time for details.

Answer 2

The worlds Largest scientific research facility switzerland's 'Counseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire 'CERN' recently succeeded in producing the first particles of antimatter. Antimatter is identical to physical matter 'EXCEPT' that it is composed of particles whoes electric charges are opposite to those found in normal matter.

Antimatter is the MOST powerful energy source known to man. It releases energy with 100% efficiency (Nuclear fission is ONLY 1.5%efficient).Antimatter creates NO pollution or Radiation, and a droplet could power NEW YORK City for a full day.

There is However, 1 catch.....

Antimatter is highly unstable. It ignites when it comes into contact with ABSOLUTELY anything....even air. A single gram of antimatter contains the energy of a 20-kiloton nuclear bomb-The size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Until recently antimatter has been created ONLY in very small amounts 'a few atoms at a time'. But CERN has now broken ground on its new Antiproton Decelerator- an Advanced antimatter production facility that promises to create antimatter in much larger quanties.

HIGH DANGERIOUS.


Best Wishes
Tonya

Answer 3

If the matter and antimatter particles have mass, such as an electron and positron, they will release energy according to e=mc^2 when they annihilate each other. This is the only known way of actually converting particulate masses into energy. The energy released from fission or fusion reactions comes entirely from the binding energy in the nucleus, and not from particle annihilation.

Answer 4

Our understanding of how particles formed just after the Big Bang suggests that matter particles and their antimatter partners were created in equal amounts. They should have annihilated each other but we know that the visible Universe is made of matter, so what happened to all the antimatter? The Russian theorist Andrei Sakharov suggested that the answer lay in a subtle effect called CP-violation. The antimatter and most of the matter would have annihilated, but CP- violation means that matter and antimatter don’t always behave in the same way, resulting in a one in a billion imbalance in favour of ordinary matter.

Answer 5

what you see is true for the creation of a virtual particle anti-particle pair.

The particles were created out of nothing and hence go back to nothing

But if real matter and anti-matter were to be mixed .Their entire mass would be converted to energy.
100 % conversion of mass to energy takes place according to E = m * c^2

Answer 6

The same energy that is used to create the particles cancels out the energy that is created when they annihilate.

Answer 7

hmmm, under what circumstances do particla and anti-particle emerge?

somehow I think that energy is involved, not just 'vacuum'.
not my area of expertise, but all other creation-scenarios that I've ever heard of involve energy-transfer.

my guess would be that the einstein mc^2 rule applies, where antimatter's "mass" is not negative.

Answer 8

when matter collides with it's antimatter due to different natures they annhiliate each other and relases energy but sometimes do not release energy like in the case of a photon and antiphoton.

Answer 9

It depends if you have dilithum crystals, seriously without dilithum we are going to have a warp core breach! and that would really make Scotty and Geordi mad!

Answer 10

True.