Does antimatter really exist?

Simply put, our common substances are all positive, and these substances are all made up of atoms. An atom consists of a nucleus (which consists of protons and neutrons) and electrons outside the nucleus.

Each proton in the nucleus carries 1 unit of positive charge and neutrons have no charge; the number of extranuclear electrons corresponds to the number of protons in the nucleus, meaning there is one extranuclear electron for every proton and each electron carries 1 unit of negative charge.

In this way, the positive charge of the nucleus and the negative charge of the electrons cancel each other out and the atom exists in an electrically neutral state.

If an atom or group of atoms loses or gains one or more electrons, they form electrically charged particles called ions. Ions that lose electrons outside the nucleus have a positive charge and are called positive ions. Ions that gain electrons outside the nucleus have a negative charge and are called negative ions.

Picture 1 of Does antimatter really exist?

Does antimatter really exist?

Antimatter also consists of atoms, but the charge of the nucleus and the electrons outside the nucleus is exactly opposite to the positive charge of matter, meaning the nucleus has a negative charge and the electrons outside the nucleus have a positive charge.

Antimatter and positive matter exist independently , if they don't meet nothing will happen, but if they meet, they will be in opposite states, releasing a huge amount of energy and will disappear together.

Nobel laureate and British physicist Paul Dirac predicted as early as 1928 that every particle must have a corresponding antiparticle, which has the same mass but opposite electrical properties. The spin quanta are also opposite. Dirac is therefore considered the first scientist to propose the concept of antimatter.

Later scientific discoveries confirmed Dirac's prediction, and antimatter exists widely in the universe, it gathers in large quantities in some special regions. In nature around us, antimatter also exists widely. For example, potassium-40 in the human body, this unstable isotope will release positrons .

Bananas also contain a small amount of potassium-40, a banana about 75 minutes releases one positron , each day can release 19 positrons.

Picture 2 of Does antimatter really exist?
A banana releases one positron every 75 minutes.

As soon as these positrons are created, they are annihilated along with the negative electrons in the vast amount of positive matter in our world, so this "antimatter " cannot produce any waves.

In fact, there are 2.6875×10^19 molecules (about 2.7 billion) in 1 cubic centimeter of air. The main gas molecules in air are oxygen and nitrogen. Each oxygen molecule has 16 negative electrons and each nitrogen molecule has 14 negative electrons.

In 1995, CERN produced the world's first batch of antihydrogen atoms in the laboratory; subsequently, many laboratories around the world have produced various antiparticles, such as protons and negative positrons; in 2011, Chinese and American scientists jointly produced the antiatom 4 helium.

From this it can be seen that antimatter really exists in our world and can be artificially produced . But so far, the antimatter discovered and created by humans has stopped at the atomic or subatomic level, and the entire piece of antimatter that can be seen by the human eye has not been discovered.

Picture 3 of Does antimatter really exist?
Antimatter is the matter that can theoretically explode with the greatest energy.

How much energy does antimatter have?

To date, antimatter is the matter that can theoretically explode with the greatest energy, and it can only be transformed according to Einstein's mass-energy equation: E=MC^2. Here E is energy, in J (joule); M is the mass of the matter, in kg; C is the speed of light in vacuum, in meters.

Einstein's mass-energy equation is one of the greatest discoveries of mankind in the 20th century. Although this formula is very simple, it explains a profound truth: mass and energy are mutually convertible and equivalent.

Converting mass into energy is not a simple thing, the largest mass-to-energy conversion technology that humans currently master is nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. The mass-to-energy conversion rate of nuclear fission is about 0.13% and the mass-to-energy conversion rate of nuclear fusion is about 0.7%.

Picture 4 of Does antimatter really exist?
The annihilation of antimatter upon encountering positive matter is instantaneous.

This conversion rate may sound small, but in fact it can release incredibly large amounts of energy, such as the explosion of atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs, perfectly verifying that the mass-energy equation is extremely accurate.

The annihilation of antimatter when encountering positive matter is instantaneous, and at the same time it converts 100% of the mass of all matter into energy, so it is also called the perfect conversion of mass and energy. Furthermore, 1 gram of antimatter must be completely annihilated by 1 gram of positive matter, so in fact, the result of partial annihilation of antimatter can obtain twice the mass and energy.

According to Einstein's mass-energy equation, 1kg of antimatter and 1kg of positive matter can produce 1.8*10^17J of energy when they meet.

How much energy is that? It's equivalent to 50 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, or about 43.02 million tons of explosive energy . That's the power of more than 3,300 atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima at once.

From this we have: the destructive energy of 1 gram of antimatter and 1 gram of positive matter is about 50 million kilowatt hours, or the explosive power of 3.3 Hiroshima atomic bombs.

Picture 5 of Does antimatter really exist?
The price of antimatter is 62.5 trillion USD/gram.

How expensive is artificial antimatter?

It can be said that there is no matter in the world more expensive than antimatter. Because so far, all the antimatter created by scientists around the world over the decades is still at the atomic level and is almost invisible under an electron microscope that is invisible to the human eye.

Fermilab used a trillion electron volt accelerator, consuming a lot of scientific and technological resources and energy for 26 years, and the total amount of antiprotons produced was only 15 nanograms, that is, 1.5 100 millionths of a gram.

And all the antihydrogen atoms, antiprotons, antielectrons, and other antimatter created in all the laboratories in the world do not exceed 20 nanograms.

The cost of producing antimatter is huge, because a large number of scientists have burned money on it for decades to create very little antiparticle. We only need to calculate the energy consumption of producing antimatter to see that it is very expensive.

Some experts have calculated that based on current electricity consumption for antimatter production, producing 1 gram of antimatter requires 2.5*10^16 kilowatt-hours (kWh). About a billionth of a gram of antimatter is produced each year, at a cost of $80 million. Therefore, its price is a whopping $62.5 trillion per gram .

Therefore, nothing in the world can be more expensive than antimatter .