I'm not a physicist, but the concept of anti-matter interests me. To the physicists on /pol/, what happens to antimatter after it decays? Does it just disappear? What effects do real elements have on their antimatter counterparts (and to this effect, my understanding is that CERN has only studied antimatter subatomic particles by smashing atoms and trapping the debris in magnetic fields--but has there ever been an antimatter atom / molecule)?
Thanks!
Other urls found in this thread:
en.wikipedia.org
twitter.com
Antimatter is exactly the same as matter except flipped. It functions the same as regular matter in all ways.
When anti-matter touches matter, they're both converted to pure energy
>what happens to antimatter after it decays
It doesnt decay, it recombines with a bit of matter and emits radiation (at least two photons btw, because relativity)
>What effects do real elements have on their antimatter counterparts
Elements, not much, since they are way too big. But quarks and antiquarks can form mesons.
>antimatter atom / molecule
Last thing I heard from CERN was that they were able to trap anti-hydrogen for multiple minutes and measured a bunch of things (magnetic moment was most important result iirc) on it with previously unknown precision in that time, so it is possible to make anti-atoms but it's hard because they will recombine with any matter they touch, so you need to keep them perfectly isolated in vacuum and trap them electromagnetically.
Sry, no references for any of this.
Nothing just disappears. The particle and its antiparticle are converted into information in the form of radiation.
What happens if antimatter is kept inside a perfect vacuum / has this been done before? Maybe what I read before was wrong but I thought CERN had the particles in a vacuum to begin with. Unless in breaking the particles apart (I recall them smashing them against metal or something) the antimatter recombined with what it was smashed against.
And no worries, I was only curious about it. I can find references myself later.
So if left alone in a vacuum, the particle should just radiate into energy?
No, it needs something to combine with to get turned into radiation.
>What happens if antimatter is kept inside a perfect vacuum / has this been done before
That's exactly what has been done at CERN with anti-hydrogen.
>Maybe what I read before was wrong but I thought CERN had the particles in a vacuum to begin with
Sure, but the main concern of CERN is usually to smash them, then see what happens with the high energy they get from smashing them, so mostly they are just concerned in the product of the collision and that product will be moving at close to the speed of light towards their detectors where there's a hella lot of matter.
>(I recall them smashing them against metal or something)
This was improved by now smashing two beams that move in opposite directions, so you get higher COM energy.
tl;dr The antimatter will literally combine with anything that is in it's way, if there is nothing, it will just remain antimatter.
>except flipped
Is this EM charge only?
Are other quantum parameters involved?
Spin is definitely flipped.
Afaik, mass is not flipped (hence, there is no negative mass) and matter and anti-matter will still attract each other gravitationally.
All other parameters should be flipped, yes.
In a vacuum? No.
In a vacuum coupled with its respective antiparticle, yes.
>It doesnt decay, it recombines with a bit of matter and emits radiation (at least two photons btw, because relativity)
That whole sentence is wrong.
Antineutrons decay, without 'recombination' and no photons.
>Antineutrons decay, without 'recombination' and no photons.
[citation needed]
Last time I checked they oscillated between different flavors but didn't decay
nvm, I was retarded, read neutrino
Neutrons also decay into protons tho, so it's LITERALLY the same thing as regular matter
An exact replica of our universe made of anti-matter exists. What ever matter does here, so does the anti-matter, just opposite.
[citation needed]
I believe you may be right, but noone has ever been able to see any indication of this, so pls don't state it like it's a fact.
>been able to see
how can you tell if a galaxy 1 bn ly away is matter or antimatter
Because it would annihilate with matter around it. Wherever there may be signigicant amounts of antimatter in the universe, it would be bright af and we would have probably seen it already.
But anti-matter itself is fact?
Well, yes, it can be produced without problems in a lab and it gets produced all the time from cosmic radiation, so yes, it is fact.
positron = anti-electron
How're you measuring that exactly?
The radiation that gets produced.
Also, if that's still not enough, look at the anti-hydrogen experiment from CERN. They sure did trap anti-matter.
If you're still not happy, take a look at this post
What is measuring the radiation?
And why does radiation = anti-matter?
>What is measuring the radiation?
A scintillator mostly I guess, I'm not into particle physics, so idk what is current state of the art.
>And why does radiation = anti-matter?
Because the radiation has energy corresponding to the energy of an e^- e^+ pair for example.
You can also shoot high-energy gamma-rays at a bubble chamber in a magnetic field and see track appearing that curve in opposite directions, meaning they have opposite charge.
>pic related
>A scintillator mostly I guess, I'm not into particle physics, so idk what is current state of the art.
How do you know a scintillator accurately represents radiation in light form?
>Because the radiation has energy corresponding to the energy of an e^- e^+ pair for example.
e^- e^+ doesn't really mean anything.
>You can also shoot high-energy gamma-rays at a bubble chamber in a magnetic field and see track appearing that curve in opposite directions, meaning they have opposite charge.
That's not proof of anything, looks like a 5 year old's first time on Paint.
ok, if you don't want believe in science, what are you doing on a science board?
Go back to your local church and suck off a priest.
I've really tried laying this out for you but you must be a troll.
>matter and anti-matter will still attract each other gravitationally.
Afaik, this hasn't been confirmed and is still an unknown, because the magnetic fields required to contain antimatter make any gravity tests impossible.
I really want this to be the case, it would solve all problems I have with antimatter in my head right now.
The part about antimatter somewhere else in the universe:
Don't worry, since it's mass is negative it will be repelled, that's why you don't see the annihilation
The apparent inequality of matter and antimatter:
Don't worry, it's because after the big bang the density was not perfectly symmetric and the part we're missing has been pushed away from our part of the universe
Antimatter being the exact opposite of matter:
Finally solved
However, does this pic not indicate that anti-matter has the same mass as matter? If the sign of the mass was inverted the path should be inverted too, right?
Anti matter doesn't have negative mass, it had negative charge.
We know antimatter exists because it's the only allowed particle to be produced in certain reactions so as to conserve charge conservation.
The real antimatter question is, are we ever going to be able to produce a useable quantity of it?
define usable
PET scans are used every day all over the globe
The two things that really matter, weapons and propulsion.
Hopefully not. It's not even that good for those applications either. The gamma rays that get produced travel in opposite directions and go through everything, meaning you can't shield it or direct it to use as propulsion. And nukes are good enough already, makes no sense to substitute it to a more unstable alternative that may fail before the payload gets delivered, killing whoever launched it.
>Spin is definitely flipped
No
>That's exactly what has been done at CERN with anti-hydrogen.
The dude was in our University last week. Was a sick lecture
Isn't anti-matter research incredibly tedious though? I mean all they're trying to do right now is measure all its properties and if that doesn't work, measure better with more accuracy to some even higher decimal places. Meanwhile theory says that they will probably find nothing and so far they have found nothing.
Must be frustrating.
I think they have some experiments lined up for that soon.
>a reactor/fuel tank that instantly combusts in an unimaginable scale upon rupturing
Genius. Can we please just stick to fusion for the next few million years?
>Isn't anti-matter research incredibly tedious though?
Oh yeah. I've spent a few summers at CERN at the antiproton decelerator. I forgot who it was, but someone there I had regularly lunch with one described it as a "tedious task, just to show that 1=1".