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chazzyfen chazzyfen
 
April 20, 2009 08:01 PM

Is antimatter real? Could it actually exist in our universe?

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philipy philipy
 
 April 21, 2009 12:15 AM
Anti-matter is perfectly real, and routinely used in experiments at places like CERN.

http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/en/Spotlight/SpotlightAandD-en.html

Anti-electrons are called positrons and are used in medical scanners called PET Scanners, where PET stands for Positron Emission Tomography.

http://www.cancerhelp.org.uk/help/default.asp?page=152
http://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/info.cfm?PG=pet

Anti-matter doesn't last long because when it encounters normal matter the two annhilate each other in a burst of energy.
Source(s):
See also:

http://livefromcern.web.cern.ch/livefromcern/antimatter/

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chazzyfen chazzyfen
 
April 21, 2009 01:49 AM
Is it naturally occurring ever?

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philipy philipy
 
April 21, 2009 04:51 AM - New Source
It is naturally occuring on Earth as a result of cosmic rays hitting the planet. The collisions between the cosmic rays and earthbound matter are natural high energy particle experiments, and give rise to antimatter particles.

Since several cosmic rays are passing through you each second, this could be happening inside you right now! (Can't tell you how likely that is though, mostly the cosmic rays have been slowed down by the atmosphere.)

Large amounts of antimatter could exist in space, but it's hard to tell. We could look at a distant galaxy made entirely of antimatter, and we'd never know.

However there might be no antimatter left out there, as it may all have annhilated with normal matter early in the life of the universe.

It's not understood why there was more matter than antimatter to begin with.

More reading about that:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/antimatter_sun_030929.html

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philipy philipy
 
April 21, 2009 04:58 AM
Oh, and antimatter is also naturally created by some types of radioactive decay.

That's where the positrons for a PET scan come from.

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philipy philipy
 
April 25, 2009 07:10 PM
I was intrigued by the idea of cosmic rays causing antimatter to be created within our bodies. I wondered if could be going on all the time and we'd not even notice it was happening.

Thanks to the wonders of Google we can calculate the energy created by typical particle/antiparticle annhiliations.

Type into Google

(2 * electron mass * (speed of light squared)) / ( 1 second)

And it will tell you:

(2 * electron mass * (the speed of light squared)) / (1 second) = 1.63742083 × 10^-13 watts

Likewise:

(2 * proton mass * (the speed of light squared)) / (1 second) = 3.00655461 × 10-^10 watts

So if proton/antiproton pair was created and destroyed in your body every second, the power genreated would only be 0.3 billionths of a watt. Not noticeable at all. :)

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dfmckay dfmckay
 
April 21, 2009 12:04 AM
Yes and yes. Antimatter was first detected in the 70s.
Source(s):
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080111-antimatter-space.html


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