What is Anti-Matter, and where is it?

What is Anti-Matter, and where is it?

Every physical that we have observed or theorized is made up of matter, the smart phone you are using, the Sun, the Black Holes even Dark Matter. But there is a thing out there called Anti-Matter. At the end of 19^th century Einstein was working on The Theory of Relativity meanwhile the other physicists were working on a theory which would explain how the tiniest particles of our universe work, the theory was named ‘The Quantum Theory’ and all this was not achieved by pure experiment but math a whole lot of it. At some point a physicist named Paul Dirac realized that x²=9:

3²=9  &  (-3)²=9

This meant that if there is a positive then there must be a negative, this suggested that if there is matter there must anti-matter.

Now the reason we don’t see anti-matter like we see matter is because if anti-matter somehow pops into existence near matter and comes in contact with it they would cancel out each other and release immense amounts of energy, this destructive phenomena is named ‘Annihilation’.

Let’s discuss what anti-matter is made up of. As we all know that matter is made up of protons and electrons, similarly anti matter is made up of a Antiproton and a Positron. The antiproton is placed where the protons are (inside the nucleus) and the positrons revolve around it just like electrons. A proton is a heavy positive particle while an antiproton is a negative heavy particle. Electrons are light and negative while positrons are light and positive.

Although matter and antimatter are like twins with opposite natures but they still are twins, although having oppositely charged particles antimatter should be same as matter. After the Big Bang the universe must have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter according to physicists, but there is no antimatter around because in the initials seconds of the Big Bang all the matter and antimatter made contact with each other and Annihilated, this is what should have happen but some how a large amount of matter was left untouched, no one knows why the Big Bang created more matter than antimatter, but physicists have already started creating antimatter in labs called Antimatter Factory to study it.

At CERN (Center for European Nuclear Research) physicists convert protons into antiprotons by use of the particle beams. CERN is the place where the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is. They take protons shooting along the LHC and convert them into Anti-Hydrogen the antimatter version of Hydrogen, which is then trapped to be studied. Why hydrogen you ask, well we know a lot about hydrogen so they wnted to know how different can its counter part be. With this a new question arises, How do we store it? Remember we can’t let antimatter touch matter because it would cause them to annihilate not even air let alone containers. So the scientists us magnetic field to hold this anti-hydrogen in place, the instrument they use to hold anti-hydrogen has a magnetic field arranged in a manner which resembles a bathtub this bathtub is called the Penning-Malmberg Trap, the magnetic field keep the anti hydrogen from hitting the walls of the trap and annihilating and powerful magnets and lasers force the anti-hydrogen to get stuck inside the magnetic field. Once trapped it can be studied. Well disappointingly it does not have magical properties like anti-gravity moreover its not different than matter at all, if you we able to build a guitar out of antimatter and play it without annihilation it would feel and sound like a regular guitar made up of matter, it’s so similar that the thing that we call matter can be antimatter and can be calling it matter as everything we study and understand is relative to our experience.

If anti-matter is so similar to matter then why even bother studying it not only that but it consumes way more energy in producing antimatter than what we get back when it annihilates and CERN has only produced only 10 nano grams of antimatter ever which could power a light bulb for a while, but it does have a practical use. It is used in Medical techniques, one example of which would be ‘Positron Emission Tomography’ also known as PET scan and is used for cancer diagnosis.