Antimatter.  What is it?  We know what matter is – physical substance found throughout the galaxy – but what is antimatter?  Can there be such a thing as inverse matter?  The theory behind antimatter is strangely logical, yet it still pushes the envelope of understanding in this world.  In this post I don’t really hope to make any grand statements about antimatter, but rather bring to light some of the more fascinating facts about the subject.  After all, antimatter is an incredibly complex idea and there is currently very little information known about antimatter.

Paul Dirac

Personally, I think the development of the theory of antimatter is the most interesting.  In the late 1920s, physicist Paul Dirac created an equation that mapped out the behavior of the movement of an electrons.  His equation worked very similarly to a quadratic function.  As the mathematical expression X^2 = 9 has two solutions (X = 3, and X = -3), Dirac’s equation mapped that there were two potential states that would explain the movement of electrons: a state in which the electron was negative, and a state in which the electron was positive.

Essentially, Dirac’s claim was that for every particle, there was another particle that exists with the same mass, same composition, but with an opposite energy sign.  For example, an electron would have the same mass, same structure, same energy, and same quantum characteristics, but the charge would be flipped.  The sign would be positive and therefore create a positron.  By this token, the collision of these anti-particles can create antimatter.  Should an antiproton and a positron fuse, they would create an antihydrogen antiatom.

I think this is amazing in itself because it means there could potentially be an entire “anti” universe that exists simultaneously with our own universe.  One of the strange details of antimatter is the imbalance of antimatter compared to normal matter in the universe.  There is drastically more normal matter than there is antimatter.  According to scientist’s original beliefs, the Big Bang theoretically should have released equal amounts of anti and normal matter during its explosion, so the reasoning behind the discrepancy between the two – known as baryon asymmetry – is still unknown.

To further study the characteristics of antimatter, scientists have created the Antiproton Decelerator, which actually manages to create antiprotons in order to study and experiment with.  Also with this machine, they are able to construct antiatoms and antimatter with the created antiprotons.  In 2011, engineers were able to create another decelerator that, paired with the initial Antiproton Decelerator, was able to prevent an antihydrogen atom from disappearing for 16 minutes.  Antimatter is extremely unstable, so being able to observe this phenomenon for even 16 minutes was an amazing achievement.

Unfortunately, it is simply a matter (ha) of fact that we do not know much about antimatter.  I wish we would put greater emphasis on the studies of these complex astronomical phenomena because I believe there must be many benefits to be derived from these studies.  I think with the continued discovery of things such as antimatter and dark matter, we will one day be able to harness the benefits that may come with each discovery.