"Anti matter" and its usefulness?

Question

where does it come from and how is it made, and if it can be made how can we use it?

Answer 1

Anti-matter is one of the best bridges between theoretical and applied physics. In theory it was thought it could exist, so we looked for it and found it, then we we able to make it in the lab and it was the same as we found in nature, though very rare. Anti-matter is made the same way ordinary matter is made, with protons, electrons and neutrons; the main difference being each anti-particle has the OPPOSITE charge of its ordinary matter counterpart. So an atom of anti-hydrogen is made of one negatively charged anti-proton and one positively charged anti-electron. As for neutrons that have no charge, they can be distinguished by their opposite spin. The basic reaction is that when a particle of matter contacts a particle of anti-matter, they are mutually annihilated in an almost complete matter to energy conversion. That's where that E=mc2 comes into play One of the more interesting topics for discussion is that if we assume the original Big Bang created equal amounts of matter and anti-matter, which would satisfy conservationism, then where is all the anti-matter? Are there whole galaxys made of antimatter? Is that where the new galaxies are formed? As for practical applications, a controlled, large scale matter / antimatter reaction would be an enormous source of energy. maybe enough to power a starship.

Answer 2

a quote that said for every action there is a negative i think that is how it goes, from galleleo or how ever you spell it i think.

but in looking at the quote scientist think that if matters here like everyhting else, it must have an opposite or a negative and it must be a unknown thing called anti matter, which will destroy matter. and i havent heard of us using i thought wed wanna stay away from it because were matter and how can you contain anti matter with matter it would destroy it, but what ever.....

But i guess theyd use it as a weapon is my only guess, a very dangerous one..

Answer 3

it's not useful to us unless we could store it in isolation from matter for use as an extremely dense fuel.

look it up on wiki... those questions don't have easy answers.

Answer 4

It is useless, I throw it away all the time.

Answer 5

In particle physics, antimatter extends the concept of the antiparticle to matter, wherein if a particle and its antiparticle come into contact with each other, the two annihilate —that is, they may both be converted into other particles with equal energy in accordance with Einstein's equation E = mc2. This gives rise to high-energy photons (gamma rays) or other particle–antiparticle pairs. The resulting particles are endowed with an amount of kinetic energy equal to the difference between the rest mass of the products of the annihilation and the rest mass of the original particle-antiparticle pair, which is often quite large.

Antimatter is not found naturally on Earth, except very briefly and in vanishingly small quantities (as the result of radioactive decay or cosmic rays). This is because antimatter which comes to exist on Earth outside the confines of a suitably equipped physics laboratory would inevitably come into contact with the ordinary matter that Earth is made of, and be annihilated. Antiparticles and some stable antimatter (such as antihydrogen) can be made in minuscule amounts, but not in enough quantity to do more than test a few of its theoretical properties.

There is considerable speculation both in science and science fiction as to why the observable universe is apparently almost entirely matter, whether other places are almost entirely antimatter instead, and what might be possible if antimatter could be harnessed, but at this time the apparent asymmetry of matter and antimatter in the visible universe is one of the great unsolved problems in physics. Possible processes by which it came about are explored in more detail under baryogenesis.

The artificial production of atoms of antimatter (specifically antihydrogen) first became a reality in the early 1990s. An atom of antihydrogen is composed of a negatively-charged antiproton being orbited by a positively-charged positron. Charles Munger of the SLAC, and associates at Fermilab, realized that an antiproton, travelling at relativistic speeds and passing close to the nucleus of an atom, would have the potential to force the creation of an electron-positron pair. It was postulated that under this scenario the antiproton would have a small chance of pairing with the positron (ejecting the electron) to form an antihydrogen atom.

In 1995 CERN announced that it had successfully created nine antihydrogen atoms by implementing the SLAC/Fermilab concept during the PS210 experiment. The experiment was performed using the Low Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR), and was led by Walter Oelert and Mario Macri. Fermilab soon confirmed the CERN findings by producing approximately 100 antihydrogen atoms at their facilities.

The antihydrogen atoms created during PS210, and subsequent experiments (at both CERN and Fermilab) were extremely energetic ("hot") and were not well suited to study. To resolve this hurdle, and to gain a better understanding of antihydrogen, two collaborations were formed in the late 1990s — ATHENA and ATRAP. The primary goal of these collaborations is the creation of less energetic ("cold") antihydrogen, better suited to study.

In 1999 CERN activated the Antiproton Decelerator, a device capable of decelerating antiprotons from 3.5 GeV to 5.3 MeV — still too "hot" to produce study-effective antihydrogen, but a huge leap forward. In late 2002 the ATHENA project announced that they had created the world's first "cold" antihydrogen. The antiprotons used in the experiment were cooled sufficiently by decelerating them (using the Antiproton Decelerator), passing them through a thin sheet of foil, and finally capturing them in a Penning trap. The antiprotons also underwent stochastic cooling at several stages during the process.

The ATHENA team's antiproton cooling process is effective, but highly inefficient. Approximately 25 million antiprotons leave the Antiproton Decelerator; roughly 10 thousand make it to the Penning trap. In early 2004 ATHENA researchers released data on a new method of creating low-energy antihydrogen. The technique involves slowing antiprotons using the Antiproton Decelerator, and injecting them into a Penning trap (specifically a Penning-Malmberg trap). Once trapped the antiprotons are mixed with electrons that have been cooled to an energy potential significantly less than the antiprotons; the resulting Coulomb collisions cool the antiprotons while warming the electrons until the particles reach an equilibrium of approximately 4 K.

While the antiprotons are being cooled in the first trap, a small cloud of positron plasma is injected into a second trap (the mixing trap). Exciting the resonance of the mixing trap’s confinement fields can control the temperature of the positron plasma; but the procedure is more effective when the plasma is in thermal equilibrium with the trap’s environment. The positron plasma cloud is generated in a positron accumulator prior to injection; the source of the positrons is usually radioactive sodium.

Once the antiprotons are sufficiently cooled, the antiproton-electron mixture is transferred into the mixing trap (containing the positrons). The electrons are subsequently removed by a series of fast pulses in the mixing trap's electrical field. When the antiprotons reach the positron plasma further Coulomb collisions occur, resulting in further cooling of the antiprotons. When the positrons and antiprotons approach thermal equilibrium antihydrogen atoms begin to form. Being electrically neutral the antihydrogen atoms are not affected by the trap and can leave the confinement fields.

Using this method ATHENA researchers predict they will be able to create up to 100 antihydrogen atoms per operational second. ATHENA and ATRAP are now seeking to further cool the antihydrogen atoms by subjecting them to an inhomogeneous field. While antihydrogen atoms are electrically neutral, their spin produces magnetic moments. These magnetic moments vary depending on the spin direction of the atom, and can be deflected by inhomogeneous fields regardless of electrical charge.

The biggest limiting factor in the production of antimatter is the availability of antiprotons. Recent data released by CERN states that when fully operational their facilities are capable of producing 107 antiprotons per second. Assuming an optimal conversion of antiprotons to antihydrogen, it would take two billion years to produce 1 gram of antihydrogen. Another limiting factor to antimatter production is storage. As stated above there is no known way to effectively store antihydrogen. The ATHENA project has managed to keep antihydrogen atoms from annihilation for tens of seconds — just enough time to briefly study their behaviour.

According to an article on the website of the CERN laboratories, which produces antimatter on a regular basis, "If we could assemble all the antimatter we've ever made at CERN and annihilate it with matter, we would have enough energy to light a single electric light bulb for a few minutes

Antiparticles are created everywhere in the universe where high-energy particle collisions take place. High-energy cosmic rays impacting Earth's atmosphere (or any other matter in the solar system) produce minute quantities of antimatter in the resulting particle jets, which is immediately annihilated by contact with nearby matter. It may similarly be produced in regions like the center of the Milky Way Galaxy and other galaxies, where very energetic celestial events occur (principally the interaction of relativistic jets with the interstellar medium). The presence of the resulting antimatter is detected by the gamma rays produced when it annihilates with nearby matter.

Antiparticles are also produced in any environment with a sufficiently high temperature (mean particle energy greater than the pair production threshold). During the period of baryogenesis, when the universe was extremely hot and dense, matter and antimatter were continually produced and annihilated. The presence of remaining matter, and absence of detection of remaining antimatter,[1] is attributed to violation of the CP-symmetry relating matter and antimatter. The exact mechanism of this violation during baryogenesis remains a mystery.

USES

Medical
Antimatter-matter reactions have practical applications in medical imaging, such as positron emission tomography (PET). In positive beta decay, a nuclide loses surplus positive charge by emitting a positron (in the same event, a proton becomes a neutron, and neutrinos are also given off). Nuclides with surplus positive charge are easily made in a cyclotron and are widely generated for medical use.


Fuel
In antimatter-matter collisions resulting in photon emission, the entire rest mass of the particles is converted to kinetic energy. The energy per unit mass is about 10 orders of magnitude greater than chemical energy, and about 2 orders of magnitude greater than nuclear energy that can be liberated today using nuclear fission or fusion. The reaction of 1 kg of antimatter with 1 kg of matter would produce 1.8×1017 J (180 petajoules) of energy (by the equation E=mc²). This is about 134 times as much energy as is obtained by nuclear fusion of the same mass of hydrogen (fusion of 1H to 4He produces about 7 MeV per nucleon, or 1.3×1015 J for 2 kg of hydrogen). This amount of energy would be released by burning 5.6 billion liters (1.5 billion US gallons) of gasoline (the combustion of one liter of gasoline in oxygen produces 3.2×107 J), or by detonating 43 million tonnes of TNT (at 4.2×106 J/kg).

Not all of that energy can be utilized by any realistic technology, because as much as 50% of energy produced in reactions between nucleons and antinucleons is carried away by neutrinos, so, for all intents and purposes, it can be considered lost.[2]