this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2023
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[–] [email protected] 91 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

Huh I didn't know antimatter was a completely confirmed thing.

After making a thin gas of thousands of antihydrogen atoms, researchers pushed it up a 3-metre-tall vertical shaft surrounded by superconducting electromagnetic coils. These can create a kind of magnetic ‘tin can’ to keep the antimatter from coming into contact with matter and annihilating. Next, the researchers let some of the hotter antiatoms escape, so that the gas in the can got colder, down to just 0.5 °C above absolute zero — and the remaining antiatoms were moving slowly.

The researchers then gradually weakened the magnetic fields at the top and bottom of their trap — akin to removing the lid and base of the can — and detected the antiatoms using two sensors as they escaped and annihilated. When opening any gas container, the contents tend to expand in all directions, but in this case the antiatoms’ low velocities meant that gravity had an observable effect: most of them came out of the bottom opening, and only one-quarter out of the top.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You may have heard of a "PET scan" used in medicine. This uses a type of antimatter called a positron.

https://bigthink.com/hard-science/positron-emission-tomography-antimatter-cancer/

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The complexity behind this is fascinating.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Just wait until you find out about MRI :)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's pretty awesome too, but they don't need molecules with atoms that were modified using particle colliders just minutes/hours before you need them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Still much more complex than PET conceptually, and much more versatile.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That might be dark matter you're thinking about

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Not only does it exist, but bananas give off a fair bit of antimatter due to their decaying potassium isotopes.

Allegedly, im not smart enough to verify it

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Would an anti-banana give off normal matter?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think it would antimatter

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Argument anihilated!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

AFAIK, yes, you might wanna look into β+- and β־-decay

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

AFAIK, yes.

There are some very small differences between matter and anti-matter, but I don't think any of them affect radioactivity.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Bananas produce antimatter, but just barely. The main radioactive material in bananas is Potassium-40. A banana is about 0.358% potassium in all. About 0.012% of naturally occurring potassium is the radioactive Potassium-40. Only 0.001% of all radioactive decay events in postassium-40 produce an antiparticle (a positron).

An average banana produces a single positron about every 75 minutes.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Brb. Making a fruit-based matter-antimatter annihilation power plant.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You kid but as a kid when I learned about potatoes and lemon batteries I was like "SCALE THIS UP NOW!"

...if only...

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

El psy kongroo

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

They say if you microwave bananas, you will get green gel bananas

^dont ^actually ^try ^that

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

We need a Far Side where ape scientists are colliding two bannanas at high speed

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

Antimatter was first observed physically back in 1932. A positron, more specifically. Its existence has been confirmed, and accepted, for ages, and some of our technology already operates using antimatter to do its tasks.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

anti-matter? ya, we have been observing it for quite a while (testing is difficult for reasons), it naturally accumulates in parts of the Van Allen belt.

Dark matter on the other hand is still completely up for question

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Large Hadron Collider wouldn't work if antimatter wasn't confirmed.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

But from the antimatter's perspective, it falls up.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Then it really is lost!

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Hmm interesting. I wondered if it would be attracted or repelled by matter. It does annihilate when it comes in contact with mater, right?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The reason antimatter is "anti" is that an antiparticle has the opposite charge of its non-anti counterpart. Electrons have a negative charge, while their antiparticles, positrons have a positive charge. And since opposite charges attract, well, I think you can figure it out from there.

And yes, matter/antimatter interactions result in annihilation.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (5 children)

What exactly does "annihilation" mean in this context. Do both "atoms" give off energy and convert to sub atomic particles? Does one atom kind of "win" over the other and undergo fission instead of complete annihilation?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

At this tiny scale, energy and mass are essentially equivalent. So when we say that matter annihilates, we mean that they transform into pure energy (in this case, as photons of light). They don't break into subatomic particles, because that still counts as mass. They just simply cease to exist.

As a side note, the "conversion rate" of mass into energy (and vice versa) is governed by Einstein's E=mc^2. All this equation means is that it takes a ridiculous amount of energy to create a small amount of mass, and vice versa, it only takes a small amount of mass to create a ridiculous amount of energy. Because antimatter annihilates completely (ie, 100% of its mass, as well as 100% of the regular matter's mass, gets converted into energy), antimatter is currently the most explosive thing known to mankind

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Ok that makes sense.

Man that's pretty wild to think about. If antimatter was created at the same time as matter in the same quantity and distribution, then why are we here. Why didn't the entire universe essentially cancel itself out? Was there some factor that benefited regular matter or hindered antimatter? Is there some level of chaos on the atomic or subatomic scale that played in regular matter being the dominant? Has some crazy philosophical implications.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

You're describing the matter-antimatter asymmetry problem

https://home.cern/science/physics/matter-antimatter-asymmetry-problem

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I mean if you just thought of all those questions on your own, that's damned impressive. You just summarized one of the greatest mysteries in particle physics. Here's a story about that exact question - what was the process that gave preference to creation of matter over antimatter?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-is-there-more-matter-than-antimatter/

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

If I understand it correctly, annihilation is a 100% efficient process that converts all the matter into energy. After the process is complete there is no matter left over and only energy in the form of light, heat, and other energy forms that go way over my head remains.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

For the simple case of electron-positron annihilation, they transform into high-energy photons, whose total energy is equal to the total mass-energy of the electron and positron. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron%E2%80%93positron_annihilation

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Annihilation means exactly that - both particles destroy each other on contact, releasing the energy that composed them.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

So then it is not really antimatter in the sense that it is completely opposite?

So antimatter still has positive mass?

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (9 children)

In my limited understanding, antimatter just means the particles have the opposite charge of normal matter. All other attributes are not part of the definition of antimatter.

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