Can someone explain antimatter?

Question

I understand that antimatter is matter that is oppositely charged than the matter that our planet is made of, and that antimatter destroys regular matter. Can any antimatter destroy any other regular matter, or does it have a specific opposite somewhere in the universe, and it will only destroy that specific particle? Please explain all you know.

Answer 1

Just as analogy, please don't take it too literally, I offer the following which is devoid of scientific terms but which might help you understand the concept. Think of matter as a hill and antimatter as an equal sized hole - negative matter. If the hill were moved so as to occupy the same space and time as the hole, the two would cancel each other out and we would end up with 1) the release of a great deal of energy and 2) level ground. The hill and the hole would mutually annihilate each other. Again, this is just a simple analogy. Don't apply it to real life thinking that is what literally occurs.

Answer 2

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 or cause the equivalent to a nuclear explosion, similar to nuclear fission —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 ephemerally 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.

Answer 3

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 or cause the equivalent to a nuclear explosion, similar to nuclear fission —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 ephemerally 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 pr

Answer 4

Anti-matter is the mirror image of regular matter. Meaning just "flip" the atom around and you have anti-matter. Its 'thought' that there are stars and galaxies made up of anti-matter, but the fact is, we just don't know. Anti-matter items would look exactly like regular matter so we can't tell the difference. It's also thought that almost all anti-matter was used up in the early, early Universe with just small amounts left. Most anti-matter is created in places like CERN and with the Large Hadron Collider. Although it would take 1,000 years to create enough to blow up the Vatican like in the movie Angels and Demons by Dan Brown.