In the antimatter hall at CERN, numerous experiments are using antiprotons from the Antiproton Decelerator to investigate the properties of antimatter.ĪCE brings together an international team of physicists, biologists and medics to study the biological effects of antiprotons. So why is there far more matter than antimatter in the universe? The Big Bang Theory, which tries to elucidate. No, I am talking about physics and why human existence is highly improbable. The Big Bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter. By saying so, I’m not joining the doomsday prophets and regressionists who troll the internet proclaiming that the human race is the worst. The insight opened the possibility of entire galaxies and universes made of antimatter.īut when matter and antimatter come into contact, they annihilate – disappearing in a flash of energy. For the electron there should be an "antielectron", for example, identical in every way but with a positive electric charge. But classical physics (and common sense) dictated that the energy of a particle must always be a positive number.ĭirac interpreted the equation to mean that for every particle there exists a corresponding antiparticle, exactly matching the particle but with opposite charge. The equation – which won Dirac the Nobel prize in 1933 – posed a problem: just as the equation x2=4 can have two possible solutions (x=2 or x=-2), so Dirac's equation could have two solutions, one for an electron with positive energy, and one for an electron with negative energy. Using E mc 2, we find that 1 gram of antimatter contains: 0.001 kg x (300,000,000 m/s) 2 90,000 GJ 25 million kWh. In 1928, British physicist Paul Dirac wrote an equation that combined quantum theory and special relativity to describe the behaviour of an electron moving at a relativistic speed. CERN is the only place on Earth that manufactures antimatter particles via high-energy collisions. About 1 billion times more energy is required to make antimatter than is finally contained in its mass.
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