Eli5 what is anti matter?
In: 158
Y’know how, in simple arithemtic, there are negative numbers? -1, -2, -37, -659, etc. When you only consider addition and subtraction, negative numbers more or less behave exactly like regular numbers. -3 + -3 = -6, just like how 3 + 3 = 6. It’s like they’re a full and complete mirror copy of all the positive numbers that follow all the same rules.
But what happens when you try to mix a positive number with its negative “mirror” copy, then? 6 + -6? They cancel out. It doesn’t matter which pair you pick, they all have the same result. Any positive number added to its negative counterpart cancels out to zero. You could thus say negative numbers are like “anti-numbers”, since they “destroy” positive numbers on “contact”.
As it so happens, matter itself, the “stuff” that makes up everything you normally think of in the universe, has a “negative” counterpart, too, that we call “antimatter”. And it more or less has all of the properties we just talked about–antimatter follows all the same rules of physics as its “normal” matter counterpart. And if antimatter and matter come together, they will cancel each other out and leave nothing behind.
Well, in the real world, they *do* leave something behind, actually. One of the so-called “laws” of physics that, for all we’ve been able to tell, cannot ever be broken is that energy can’t be created or destroyed. The “conservation of energy” is usually how it’s phrased. Energy can be moved around or it can change form, but you can’t create it from nothing or delete it from the universe after it’s there.
You may have some familiarity with Albert Einstein and his legendary math equation, E = mc^(2). This is a very profound equation once you understand what the variables mean and what it implies. *E* refers to a quantity of raw energy. *m* refers to a quantity of mass. And *c* is the speed of light in a vacuum. What is this equation telling us, then? If you have a chunk of matter, it will have a certain mass. If you multiply it times the speed of light (a stupidly huge number), and then multiply that answer by the speed of light *again*, it will be equal to… some quantity of energy. A *lot* of energy. So… okay then? What does that mean? Turns out, it’s actually possible to convert anything with mass (including both matter and antimatter) into pure energy, and back again. And that equation shows you the “conversion ratio” between the two. And as we saw, a teensy tiny amout of mass can unleash a *stupidly huge* amount of energy.
This isn’t just a theoretical thing, either. You know how nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants are a thing? This process of converting mass to energy is actually the basis of how they can do what they do–take a teensy tiny amount of fuel, and turns a fraction of a fraction of it into a shitload of power. To put that into perspective, they say the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in World War II unleashed all of that power from a single bank note’s worth of mass. It’s also how fission can do the same thing, which powers the Sun itself, and all other stars in the universe.
So, antimatter. If you bring it into contact with normal matter, the two cancel out and disappear. But both of those have mass. And mass is equivalent to energy. And we know energy can’t just disappear. So when they cancel out, all of their mass is converted to energy and released instantly. *All of it*. A nuclear bomb, for comparison, might be able to convert 0.3% of its nuclear fuel to destructive energy. A matter-antimatter collision will convert *200%* of its fuel to energy (because both the antimatter *and* the matter it touches are converted). This is perhaps one of the single most violent events that can happen in the universe. It even has a special name: annihilation.
So if you ever find a lump of antimatter in a museum some day in your lifetime, don’t bump it.
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