hello got a ques from space?

Question

what is antimatter ?

i recently watched a pragram on discovery which said tht is is the most dangerous thing known 2 humanity ever. it said that just a pinhead of antimatter was enough 2 blow up the new york city.
and bout a kg of it would be enough 2 blow up the entire earth!

is this true, if it is then wht r the possibilities of man acquiring it by the eng of the century and blowing himself up?

Answer 1

We can never just "aquire" antimatter, because it has to be created, not just found somewhere. Creating it requires just as much (or more) energy to create it as it will release, so nothing is gained by having it. We are currently unable to produce antimatter in any amount greater than a few atoms, and it's almost impossible to contain as well.

Answer 2

In particle physics, antimatter extends the concept of the antiparticle to matter, whereby antimatter is composed of antiparticles in the same way that normal matter is composed of particles. For example an antielectron (positron) and an antiproton could form an antihydrogen atom in the same way that an electron and a proton form a normal matter hydrogen atom. Furthermore, mixing of matter and antimatter would lead to the annihilation of both in the same way that mixing of antiparticles and particles does, thus giving rise to high-energy photons (gamma rays) or other particle–antiparticle pairs. The particles resulting from matter-antimatter annihilation are endowed with energy equal to the difference between the rest mass of the products of the annihilation and the rest mass of the original matter-antimatter 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.

Answer 3

We've already made antimatter in a nuclear accelerator. Luckily for us however, it is inherently unstable in our world of conventional matter and each atom is almost instantly annihilated. So the question would be: How could anyone accumulate enough anti-matter for it to be a problem? Unlikely that will happen in the next few 100 years. More likely that we will find a way to destroy ourselves with all the old stuff... and won't need any new toys to do so.

Answer 4

Antimatter is not just some chemical or compound you could mix up in your basement and use to blow up anything.
It can only be created (and right now only in tiny atom-sized amounts) using only one of the few huge particle accelerators (like CERN) to collide high-speed subatomic particles.
Even if they could produce antimatter in any quantity, there is no substance that can hold it - when any matter (air, water, anything) and antimatter come in contact they annihilate each other in a burst of gamma rays. Both are instantly destroyed, producing the energy in Einstein's equation e = mc squared.

It is the most dangerous thing we know of, but is so extremely difficult to produce in any usable quantity that its not likely to be a threat to us. Its not something terrorists could just steal from a truck (like uranium or missiles) and its not something a kid could make in his basement.

Answer 5

I give it 20 years and we will have made significant breakthroughs that will allow us to use and make antimatter a part of our daily lives.
Antimatter reactors=enough power to end our dependency on oil
Antimatter Rockets= potential deepspace travel

Answer 6

anti matter is litterally the opposite of matter
a positron which is the opposite of an electron has the same mass but opposite charge
when anti matter meets matter it creates a burst of radiation
if enough of it happens theres a giant explosion
yeah a small amount can blow up a large city but we cannot really make it
there are galaxies made of anti matter but we cannot touch any of it cause we're made of matter

Answer 7

The only ANTI MATTER know is the POSITRON which moves freely in the universe and occasionally collides with the ANTI PARTICAL the ELECTRON releasing two gamma rays.

Other than that it's sci fi