How exactly is Antimatter made in a laboratory?

Question

Can any antimatter element theoretically be fabricated? How is this done?

In: Technology

Answer 1

Antimatter is produced typically by blasting electrons through the nucleus of a heavy atom at incredible speeds, nearly the speed of light. This causes the electrons to emit energy quanta that decay into both matter and antimatter, so it is then just a matter of separating and isolating the antimatter.

> Can any antimatter element theoretically be fabricated?

Current theories suggest that yes, antimatter chemistry is likely to behave basically the same to normal matter chemistry. The problem is verifying this because getting any large quantity of antimatter which is cool enough to study is very difficult (remember you are producing it at nearly light speed, you need to get it to slow down to work with it), and manipulating it is difficult considering it will annihilate any material it touches.