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What's antimatter?


Bruno da Silva

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Antimatter means particles which have opposite properties to "normal" matter. For every particle, there is a corresponding antiparticle. For example, the anti-electron is the positron.

 

 

And what can we do with it?

 

Positrons are used in Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans.

http://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/info.cfm?pg=pet

 

I can't think of any other practical applications at the moment. After all, we can only create small numbers of anti-particles.

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Antimatter means particles which have opposite properties to "normal" matter. For every particle, there is a corresponding antiparticle. For example, the anti-electron is the positron.

 

 

Positrons are used in Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans.

http://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/info.cfm?pg=pet

 

I can't think of any other practical applications at the moment. After all, we can only create small numbers of anti-particles.

 

What can we do with a bunch of antimatter?

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You troll.

 

Form the linked article, the first method is:

 

1. Annihilated by an equivalent quantity of antimatter

You will need: An entire planet Earth made from antimatter

...

Feasibility rating: 2/10.

 

So I assume you didn't bother to read it.

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Antimatter is just like ordinary matter, the antiparticle has the same mass as its particle partner, but some of the quantum numbers are flipped; for example charge, lepton number and spin.

 

 

And what can we do with it?

There are, as already mentioned medical uses of antimatter.

 

 

What's it for?

I am not quite sure what you mean by this question. Are you looking for some explanation of why nature needs antimatter?

 

The best explanation is that, following the work of Dirac, we know that when you consider relativistic quantum theory then you necessarily get a 'mirror copy' of all the particles that you first try to model. Basically, relativity + quantum demands these antiparticles.

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