what is antimatter? Does it exist? How does it matter to us?
In: Physics
Matter is made up of things that are positively and negatively charged…and no matter what we looked at, they always had the same charge. We wanted to know why they were charged this way and considered, “What if the charges were flipped? Is that possible?”
We found this was possible (antimatter), but it can’t really exist naturally around us because the moment it touches normal matter, the combination creates and explosion releasing a lot of energy.
This is important because there doesn’t seem to be a reason for matter to exist, other than by accident. Antimatter is just as likely to be created as matter, and the combination of the two would cancel each other out leaving a hot universe full of energy. Somehow, the universe created a tiny amount more of matter than antimatter, allowing the rest of the universe to appear like it does today.
Like a million balloons being dropped on a million tacks, the expectation would be a popped balloon. And yet, at the end, there was somehow a balloon or two that survived. We’re interested in knowing how that happened, and that requires a better understanding of antimatter, which is difficult to study while preventing it from touching any normal matter.
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