Ever since watching the film Angels and
Demons (Unless you read the book), we have discovered the term,
anti-Matter. This term has now entered the public domain with great
force and people are perplexed about what it is, what it does and why
it is exists. Anti-Matter is a form of negative mass.
They are a bunch of negative particles,
there are many anti-particles which have been determined by
scientists, such as the anti-proton, anti-neutron and positron.
Surprisingly these anti-particles actually have nearly identical
properties, except for one fundamental property. The electric charge.
These particles almost identical are actually a negative charge (-),
oppose to the particles we are familiar with, the positive
particles(+). Recently scientists at CERN were able to isolate
anti-particles from their positive counterparts. They are usually
present with a positive charge (+) particle when produced by using
Gamma Rays, this is due to their light weight, allowing low intensity
gamma rays to produce these pairs of anti and positive particles.
Fig. 1 Illustration of Antimatter/Matter Annihilation
Credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss
Credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss
Some of the most famous scientists have
dabbled in the science of anti-Matter, from Paul Dirac to Richard
Feynman. Where Dirac had first vision a world with the existence of
Anti-Matter allowing him to look deeper in the world of the negative.
This was first realised when he was trying to create a relativistic
wave equations for the electron. Feynman visualised the anti-Matter
being able to annihilate other positive particles. This annihilation
would occur when two particles would collide with each other
resulting in a massive and violent cancellation, almost neutralising
out both masses. A example of this is the Electron-Positron reactions
causing large quantities of photons (Particles of light) to emit from
the annihilation.
Energy Source?
One theory would look into energy
harnessing, allowing anti-Matter engines so to speak be created as a
fuel source for space travel. One ideal candidate is the proton –
anti-proton collision, which would emit mesons (Hadronic Subatomic
Particles: we'll come back to those later). This reaction is
theorised to be a positive form of energy generation. Being the most
energy efficient, including nuclear fission and also surprisingly
nuclear fusion. Which fusion still has to be proven to be sustainable
as of yet.
Stance in the Universe.
Scientist believe when the big bang
occurred, the universe was just energy to begin with, no matter had
been synthesised, this was by pair-production. For there is a light
there must be a dark, and for up, there must be a down. This is
thought to be the same with positive mass and negative mass. But
since the big-bang, down the time line there had come a point where
the universe tilted in favour of the positive mass, being dominant in
the universe. Many do not know why positive mass won the battle, but
Feynman theorised that it was down to the asymmetries of particles.
An example of which is the reverse time behaviour.
Anti-Matter at this stage is one of the
cutting edges of Physics, not knowing how to harness it, but knowing
it actually exists give us hope into a clean and sustainable energy
source and perhaps even more, something we didn't expect.
Feynman.
