Eli5: If there are 4 types of matter. Solid liquid gas and plasma. Where dose anti matter fall
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Anti matter is the evil twin brother to matter. same thing just opposite. If matter and anti matter touch they destroy each other. someone else might be able to explain more
There are many more than 4 states of matter. Solid, liquid, gas, and plasma are the four that are easily accessible under human conditions, but many others – like superfluids, various forms of degenerate matter, quark-gluon plasma, and many more – exist under exotic enough conditions like the cores of giant stars or the moments after the Big Bang.
That said: antimatter is almost* physically identical to matter, just with some numbers flipped. Antimatter can take the same states as matter can, so antimatter gases, liquids, solids, plasmas, and even more exotic states all exist too. (It turns out that there’s some very slight differences, but nothing that makes a difference to the chemistry that drives the four common states.)
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* it’s known that the behavior of matter and antimatter differs slightly in how they interact with the weak interaction and perhaps the strong nuclear force. But since the properties OP is talking about are dominated by electrons – and therefore by electromagnetism, which **is** the same for both – antimatter is expected to show for-all-intents-and-purposes-the-same chemical properties.
CERN produced a few anti hydrogen atom, so it would count as a gaz. However, I am not sure they produced enough to have a gaz, in the sense atoms interacting with each others (mostly pushing each other away) .
Antimatter particles share the same mass as their matter counterparts, but qualities such as electric charge are opposite. The positively charged positron, for example, is the antiparticle to the negatively charged electron. Matter and antimatter particles are always produced as a pair and, if they come in contact, annihilate one another, leaving behind pure energy
The Big Bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the early universe. But today, everything we see from the smallest life forms on Earth to the largest stellar objects is made almost entirely of matter. Comparatively, there is not much antimatter to be found. Something must have happened to tip the balance. One of the greatest challenges in physics is to figure out what happened to the antimatter, or why we see an asymmetry between matter and antimatter.
https://home.cern/science/physics/matter-antimatter-asymmetry-problem
Those are the four most common phases of matter, but many more odd ones exist.
Antimatter can, in theory, take any of these phases. In fact, we believe antimatter will act almost identically to regular matter, with a few things backwards in niche physics and electronics.
The states of matter are actually not really specific states but rather general categories of the state of a material, e. g. there are different states of ice that have a phase transition between them depending on temperature and pressure, but as they all have a essentially crystalline structure they are all considered solid.
In fact plasma is not one of these states as it is actually a different chemical state which is reached through a chemical reaction instead of a phase transition which would be necessary for a state of matter.
Antimatter should for most aspects be essentially identical to normal matter (wether there are any functional differences is subject of a lot of research) except that electrical and a few other charges are swapped. Therefore Antimatter should be able to achieve identical states as normal matter if you have atoms of equivalent cores (Anti-Hydrogen and Anti-Oxygen to form Anti-H20, etc.)
For practical purposes we are essentially only able to get very low Z (in the very upper part of the periodic system) Antimatter particles that occur primarily in gaseous form. Additionally the antimatter is usually kept in plasma form as the exposed charges of this state allow for electromagnetic containment without the antimatter coming into contact with normal matter and annealing.
So in the end: The antimatter we have is usually in a plasma state, but that is mostly for ease of handling.
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