Science 17

ANTIMATTER

In modern physics, antimatter is defined as matter composed of the antiparticles of the corresponding particles in "ordinary" matter. These are injected into the bloodstream, where they are naturally broken down, releasing positrons that meet electrons in the body and annihilate. The annihilations produce gamma rays that are used to construct images. Antimatter is the same as ordinary matter except that it has the opposite electric charge. Although it may sound like something out of science fiction, antimatter is real. Antimatter was created along with matter after the Big Bang. But antimatter is rare in today's universe, and scientists aren't sure why. Today, antimatter is primarily found in cosmic rays extraterrestrial high-energy particles that form new particles as they zip into the Earth's . For the past 50 years and more, laboratories like CERN have routinely produced antiparticles, and in 1995 CERN became the first laboratory to create anti-atoms artificially. But no one has ever produced antimatter without also obtaining the corresponding matter particles. Right now, antimatter is the most expensive substance on Earth, about $62.5 trillion a gram ($1.75 quadrillion an ounce). A NASA spacecraft discovers antimatter bursts released by thunderstorms. And now scientists have discovered that these flashes also create the asymmetrical opposite of matter antimatter. NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope was designed to monitor gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light, in outer space. Antimatter is nearly 10 times more powerful than the most powerful nuclear weapons, due to the fact that nuclear reactions only release 10% of their energy created as the blast itself. Antimatter, being antimatter, gives all 100% as the explosion. Antimatter is also produced by lightning and cosmic rays. It is well understood by physicists, and is predicted by standard particle physics theories. Dark matter is matter that does not interact electromagnetically, and therefore cannot be seen using light. The modern theory of antimatter began in 1928, with a paper by Paul Dirac. Dirac realised that his relativistic version of the Schrödinger wave equation for electrons predicted the possibility of antielectrons. These were discovered by Carl D. Anderson in 1932 and named positrons from "positive electron".

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