What is anti-matter?
Antimatter is the opposite of normal matter.
In particular, the properties of the subatomic particles of antimatter are
completely different from those of ordinary matter. The electric charges of
these particles are also opposite. Antimatter was created with matter at the time
of the Big Bang, but in today's universe, antimatter has disappeared and scientists
have not yet been able to understand why this happened.
To better understand antimatter, we need to
know more about ordinary matter. Matter is made up of atoms, which are the
basic units of chemical elements such as hydrogen, helium or oxygen.
The universe
of atoms is very confusing because it is full of strange particles that have
properties like spin and flavor that physicists have only recently begun to
understand. If explained in simple words, there are particles in atoms which
are called electrons, protons and neutrons. Each atom of each element has a
specific number of protons, hydrogen has one proton, helium has two protons,
and so on.
Antiparticles
The central part of an atom, which is called
the nucleus, contains protons (which have a positive charge) and neutrons
(which have no charge). Electrons, which usually have a negative charge, move
in orbits outside the nucleus. Their orbits change depending on how excited the
electrons are (meaning how much energy they have).
In the case of antimatter, the electric
charges are opposite to that of normal matter. The antielectron (called a
positron) behaves like an electron but has a positive charge. Antiprotons have
a negative charge. These antimatter particles (called antiparticles) are
produced and studied in the world's largest particle accelerators, such as the
Large Hadron Collider. These machines are operated by a European nuclear
research organization called CERN.
Anti-matter has no anti-gravity whatsoever.
Although this has not been confirmed experimentally, current theory predicts
that antimatter will behave in the same way as normal matter.
Where is Antimatter?
Antimatter particles are produced in
high-speed collisions. In the early days after the Big Bang, only energy
existed. Since then, as the universe
cooled and expanded, matter and antimatter particles were created in equal
amounts. After all, how did normal matter dominate antimatter? Scientists have
not found the answer to this question yet.
One theory state that in the beginning,
ordinary matter was formed more than antimatter until they collided and
annihilated, leaving a large amount of ordinary matter, from which stars,
galaxies,
and all of us are. was born
The antimatter prediction and the Nobel Prize
The first prediction of antimatter was made by
English physicist Paul Dirac in 1928, on which a magazine wrote that Paul Dirac
is the greatest British theorist after Isaac Newton.
Dirac combined Einstein's equations of special
theory of relativity (which states that light is the fastest object in the universe)
and quantum mechanics (which states what happens in atoms). He discovered that
this equation works for negatively charged electrons or positively charged
particles.
At first, Dirac was hesitant to share his
findings with other scientists, but he finally got the courage to tell them
that every particle in the universe
has an inverted image. American physicist Carl Anderson discovered particles
called positrons in 1932. Dirac was awarded the Nobel Prize
in Physics in 1933 and received the prize in 1936.
Antimatter spaceship
When antimatter particles interact with matter
particles, they annihilate each other and generate energy. From this, engineers
hypothesized that antimatter could be an important source of energy for
spacecraft that would allow us to explore the universe.
NASA has warned that there is a significant
problem with this idea. It can cost about 100 billion dollars to make one
milligram of antimatter. Although research can be achieved with very little
antimatter, this is the minimum amount of antimatter that would be needed for
any practical work. If we talk about its use on a commercial basis, then this
cost should be very low. Producing energy is another major challenge because
the energy required to produce the antimatter is much greater than the energy
obtained from the reaction of the antimatter.
NASA and other groups are working to improve
existing technology to make antimatter spaceships possible. In 2012, a group
reported that in the next 40 to 60 years it will be possible to build
antimatter-powered spacecraft.
Deuterium and tritium (heavier isotopes of
hydrogen that have one or two neutrons in their nucleus rather than normal
hydrogen, which has no neutrons) began to be designed. A beam of anti-protons
will then be directed at the core, which will forcefully collide with a piece
of uranium embedded inside. After the anti-proton collides with uranium, both
of them will annihilate and fission will produce fission products that will
start the nuclear fusion reaction. Properly it can propel the spacecraft.
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