We all have heard about antimatter. It has been represented in movies and cartoons a few times -- an intergalactic villain who wanted to destroy the universe with antimatter! But is antimatter like the entertainment industries represent it? What are its properties?
Yes, antimatter is the opposite of normal matter. Most importantly, it has the opposite properties of normal matter. For example, we all know that an atom is made up of electrons, with a negative charge, and protons, with a positive one. Can you imagine what are the opposite twins of these guys?
Anti - electrons are called positrons, and, as you should imagine, they have a positive charge. Antiprotons, on the other hand, have a negative charge.
According to NASA, antimatter is not antigravity. As far as scientists know, gravity acts normally for both conditions of matter.
At the cataclysmic beginning of our universe, the Big Bang, there was only energy. As the baby cosmos expanded and cooled down, this energy was transformed into both matter and antimatter. But here comes the question: why did normal matter survive? Why wasn’t everything destroyed through the mutual annihilation of matter and antimatter?
For now, this question remains unanswered. A few theories say that, maybe, at the dawn of the universe, the number of normal matter particles outnumbered the number of antimatter ones, so, at the end of this huge mutual destruction, there was still enough usual matter to make up galaxies, planets and all we now know -- but nothing has been proved yet.
Some people even discuss the usage of antimatter as a rocket fuel ( using the energy of the matter-antimatter interaction). But the fact is that producing antimatter is still too expensive. One milligram of it costs about 100 billion dollars. In addition, it takes more energy to create antimatter than what is received back. However, scientists do not lose hope on this idea and continue trying to make this plan industrially and economically possible.
Credits:
nasa.gov
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