What is antimatter?
The existence of antimatter was first predicted in 1928 by Paul Dirac and has been experimentally verified by the artificial creation of the positron (e+) in a laboratory in 1933. The positron, the electron’s antiparticle, carries a positive electrical charge. Not unlike the reflection in a mirror, there is exactly one antimatter particle for each known particle and they behave just like their corresponding matter particles, except they have opposite charges and/or spins. When a matter particle and antimatter particle meet, they annihilate each other into a flash of energy. The universe we can observe contains almost no antimatter. Therefore, antimatter particles are likely to meet their fate and collide with matter particles. Recent research suggests that the symmetry between matter and antimatter is less than perfect. Scientists have observed a phenomenon called charge/parity violation, which implies that antimatter presents not quite the reflection image of matter.
Antimatter is at the heart of science fiction novels and shows such as Star Trek and Quantum Leap but in reality the existence of antimatter in our universe is not fiction at all. Antimatter, as its name implies, is the opposite of matter and was discovered in the first half of the twentieth century. To this day, antimatter continues to intrigue physicists and science fiction fans alike. Matter, the stuff that all physical things are composed of, is made of atoms which are themselves composed of particles such as protons, electrons and neutrons. Similarly, antimatter contains antiparticles that are called antiprotons, positrons, and antineutrons respectively. Particles and antiparticles have the same mass but opposite charges; for example an electron is negatively charged and it’s opposite the positron is an electron with a positive charge. Therefore antimatter is an umbrella term that refers to the culmination of these antiparticles. When matter and antimatter come into contact with o
R. Michael Barnett of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Helen Quinn of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center offer this answer, portions of which are paraphrased from their book The Charm of Strange Quarks: In 1930 Paul Dirac formulated a quantum theory for the motion of electrons in electric and magnetic fields, the first theory that correctly included Einstein’s theory of special relativity in this context. This theory led to a surprising predictionthe equations that described the electron also described, and in fact required, the existence of another type of particle with exactly the same mass as the electron but with positive instead of negative electric charge. This particle, which is called the positron, is the antiparticle of the electron, and it was the first example of antimatter. Its discovery in experiments soon confirmed the remarkable prediction of antimatter in Dirac’s theory. A cloud chamber picture taken by Carl D. Anderson in 1931 showed a particle enterin
Scientists have been studying antimatter by producing, storing, and colliding small quantities at Fermilab and CERN for several decades. Antimatter is a mirror energy of matter and can be a solid, liquid, gas, or plasma. In Plasma Cosmology, the universe is composed of equal quantities of matter & antimatter. The Star Trek and Star Wars episodes on TV and movies have given people a general explanation. • In the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, there are two black holes. The Einstein-Rosen Bridge keeps the matter and antimatter black holes separated. The oscillations between the black holes at opposite ends of the wormhole force the black holes to become white holes that eject matter and antimatter in opposite directions forming the spiral arms of stars within the galactic disk. Scientists have observed hundreds of new stars are being churned out from the center of the galaxy. • The sun is one of the billions of stars, composed of matter. Like our solar system, there are antimatter stars
