Eli5 what is anti matter?
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In figuring out what everything in the universe is made of, we have discovered a group of particles which, as far as we can tell, aren’t made up of anything simpler. We call these particles “elementary particles” and they are:
* Quarks (up, down, charms, top, bottom)
* Electron family particles (electrons, muons, tau)
* Neutrino family particles (electron neutrinos, muon neutrinos, tau neutrinos)
* Force particles (gluons, photons, Z/W bosons, Higgs boson)
Naturally, you might ask how can we tell what kind of particle something is? Well, there are a handful of properties that essentially determine what a particle is:
* Mass
* Spin
* Electromagnetic charge
And that’s pretty much it. If you have a particle that is 9.1093837015×10^(−31) kilograms, has a spin of 1/2, and an electric charge of -1, then it’s an electron.
We have also discovered the existence of particles whose properties match those of the particles listed above, except the electromagnetic charge is different. For example, there exists a particle that is 9.1093837015×10−31 kilograms, has a spin of 1/2, and an electric charge of +1.
We call these particles anti-particles, as they appear to be the “opposite” of the particles whose mass/spin they match, and annihilate them on contact. In some cases they get a special name (e.g. the anti-particle of the electron is called the positron), but generally it’s just “anti-” (e.g. anti-up quark).
As far as we can tell, anti-particles obey all the same physical laws as normal particles, they just have opposite electrical charges.
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