Antimatter - The Yin Yang OF Nature
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| The Yin Yang of nature |
Hey there, today
we are going to talk about the counterpart of matter which is Antimatter.
For each type of particle of
matter, there is a corresponding type of particle of antiparticle. An
antiparticle has the same mass as its
particle partner, but all its other characteristics are opposite of its
particle’s.
For example, the
antielectron has the same mass as an electron, but its electric charge is +1,
whereas the electron’s electric charge is -1.
Just like the
electron, all the particles which have an electric charge have an antiparticle
of the same mass but opposite electric charge. This property makes the particle
and antiparticle very different from each other.
Some
electrically neutral particles are their own antiparticles. Photons, the
particles of light, and antiphotons are one and the same thing. Other neutral
bosons such as Z0 and graviton are also their own antiparticle.
Neutrons and
antineutrons have both zero charge, but they are the different particle.
Neutrons are made of quarks and antineutrons are made of antiquarks. The
electric charges of antiquarks are different from quarks and therefore the
difference between neutrons and antineutrons.
If a particle
and an antiparticle combine, they annihilate – they totally destroy one another
and leave behind only energy - no residual charge, no residual matter, no
residual anything. After the pair annihilates no trace remains that the
particle and antiparticle ever existed.
We can rewind it too. Any
particle and antiparticle pair can be created from pure energy. This is
bread-and-butter of experimental particle physics. By smashing two particles
together often enough and hard enough we eventually create every particle
nature allows, with its antiparticle.
We are content
what we find. In fact, we don't know what we are going to find. It is like a lottery.
If the available energy in a collision is E we can
create any particle-antiparticle pair whose combined mass is less than E/c 2 (due to Einstein’s equation E=mc2). Physicists always want
higher energy particle accelerators – all the better to cook up new particles.
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| Creation of a neutron |
For example, an antineutron and a neutron are created
from the collision energy of two protons.
In almost all cases, any interaction that can occur
among a group of a particle can also occur among the corresponding group of
antiparticles. Nature is not bias, it supports both the particles and
antiparticles. This is called CP-symmetry.
However, this is not the case every time, sometimes
the CP-symmetry is broken i.e. this process can create more particles than
antiparticles.
This played a crucial role in the history of the
evolution of the universe. It allowed slightly more matter than antimatter to develop during
the first one second of existence. The difference was very small. For example, for every one billion
antielectrons there were 1 billion and ONE electrons.
After the universe was one second old; it was too
cool(less kinetic energy) for new particle and antiparticle pairs to form from
a collision.
Antimatter annihilated with matter creating a
tremendous amount of photons and leaving behind the slight excess of matter
that had developed earlier. The antimatter ran out and today there is almost no
antimatter left in the universe
Everything we see is made of a slight excess of
matter.
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