Matter and Antimatter

[Done]

For the electric forces, opposite charges attract, like charges repel. For magnetic forces opposite poles attract and like charges repel. But for gravitational forces, matter attracts matter. What about the gravitational forces between matter and antimatter? What about the gravitational forces between antimatter and antimatter?

 

Does antimatter gravitationally attract other antimatter?  Does matter gravitationally attract or repel antimatter? We believe that matter and antimatter pairs will destroy each other on contact.  We believe that matter and antimatter pairs appear to be randomly created.

 

Let’s assume that in the Big Bang equal amounts of matter and antimatter were formed at the same time. Where is the antimatter?  Why didn’t the matter and antimatter annihilate each other?

 

Let’s assume that antimatter attracts antimatter like matter attracts matter. This means we would have antimatter atoms, molecules, planets, stars, black holes, etc. similar to what we see with matter. There would be solar systems of antimatter like our solar systems of matter.

 

If matter and antimatter attracted one another or did not have any gravitational effect on each other, they could coexist in close proximity. We might see antimatter planets in matter solar systems. We might see antimatter solar systems and matter solar systems in the same galaxy. If this were the case, it seems like we would have discovered nearby antimatter in our solar system. Also, the mutual annihilation of matter and antimatter would be common.

 

If we assume that matter repels antimatter, many of these issues can be resolved. Antimatter could still form antimatter atoms, molecules, planets, stars, black holes, etc., but they would be repelled by matter. This would maintain a balance and prevent the mutual annihilation of matter and antimatter in the universe.

 

Now there is another consideration. It has been determined that light is bent due to gravitational force. It behaves like matter and is attracted to matter. This makes sense since light and other EM waves are produced by matter.

What about light produced by antimatter?  Would antimatter light react like antimatter? If so, that means antimatter EM waves would be repelled by matter and attracted to antimatter. So, there would be some basic difference between the two types of EM waves.

 

It would be interesting to compare matter EM waves and antimatter EM waves. We know that matter produces and interacts with associated EM waves. Let’s assume that antimatter produces and interacts with associated EM waves.  If the matter and antimatter EM waves ARE different, could matter detect antimatter EM waves? Could antimatter be used to detect matter EM waves?

 

What if we could not detect antimatter EM waves using matter? This might mean that when we view the universe we only see the matter in the universe and not the antimatter. Could antimatter EM waves be invisible to us poor matter beings?

 

Maybe we need to change the Conservation of Mass and Energy Law to the Conservation of Matter mass/energy and Antimatter mass/energy. Matter mass and associated EM waves would be positive and antimatter mass and associated energy would be negative.  That might give us a zero sum for all mass and energy in the universe.

[Janus]

There is no reason to expect antimatter to behave any differently with respect to gravity than "regular" matter.  

Photons are their own anti-particle,  so there is no way to distinguish between light generated by antimatter vs, regular matter.   Electromagnetic waves can be generated by accelerating charged particles, and in this respect there is no difference between accelerating a negatively charged electron and a negatively charged antiproton. 

PET scans work by using  isotopes that decay by the Beta+ reaction, in that they emit positrons rather than electrons.  These positrons then annihilate with electrons to produce gamma rays which are detected by the scan.    If  there  anti-gamma rays as well as regular gamma rays, why would such a reaction only produce gamma rays?  Gamma rays which have an energy equal to the combined mass conversion of the electron and positron. 

[Sensei]

47 minutes ago, Done said:

We believe that matter and antimatter pairs will destroy each other on contact.

Faith is not needed in this case. It's experimental quantum physics.

 

Annihilation of electrons and positrons is responsible for ~7.64% of entire energy emitted by the Sun.

[Strange]

2 hours ago, Done said:

Does antimatter gravitationally attract other antimatter?  Does matter gravitationally attract or repel antimatter?

There are good theoretical reasons to think that matter and antimatter behave identically (ie they all attract one another). This has not been experimental confirmed yet, but the ALPHA experiment at CERN is trying to collect enough anti-hydrogen to test this.

2 hours ago, Done said:

We believe that matter and antimatter pairs will destroy each other on contact.

We know this. It is not just experimental confirmed but is observed everyday and is used in industry and medicine.

2 hours ago, Done said:

We believe that matter and antimatter pairs appear to be randomly created.

Do we? I don't know anyone who believes that.

2 hours ago, Done said:

What about light produced by antimatter?  Would antimatter light react like antimatter?

Yes. This has been tested by the ALPHA experiment; the spectrum of anti-hydrogen is indistinguishable from hydrogen.

2 hours ago, Done said:

It would be interesting to compare matter EM waves and antimatter EM waves.

There is no such thing as "antimatter EM waves". It is just electromagnetism; photons and anti-photons are the same thing.

 

[Moontanman]

2 hours ago, Done said:

For the electric forces, opposite charges attract, like charges repel. For magnetic forces opposite poles attract and like charges repel. But for gravitational forces, matter attracts matter. What about the gravitational forces between matter and antimatter? What about the gravitational forces between antimatter and antimatter?

 

Does antimatter gravitationally attract other antimatter?  Does matter gravitationally attract or repel antimatter? We believe that matter and antimatter pairs will destroy each other on contact.  We believe that matter and antimatter pairs appear to be randomly created.

 

Let’s assume that in the Big Bang equal amounts of matter and antimatter were formed at the same time. Where is the antimatter?  Why didn’t the matter and antimatter annihilate each other?

 

Let’s assume that antimatter attracts antimatter like matter attracts matter. This means we would have antimatter atoms, molecules, planets, stars, black holes, etc. similar to what we see with matter. There would be solar systems of antimatter like our solar systems of matter.

 

If matter and antimatter attracted one another or did not have any gravitational effect on each other, they could coexist in close proximity. We might see antimatter planets in matter solar systems. We might see antimatter solar systems and matter solar systems in the same galaxy. If this were the case, it seems like we would have discovered nearby antimatter in our solar system. Also, the mutual annihilation of matter and antimatter would be common.

 

If we assume that matter repels antimatter, many of these issues can be resolved. Antimatter could still form antimatter atoms, molecules, planets, stars, black holes, etc., but they would be repelled by matter. This would maintain a balance and prevent the mutual annihilation of matter and antimatter in the universe.

 

Now there is another consideration. It has been determined that light is bent due to gravitational force. It behaves like matter and is attracted to matter. This makes sense since light and other EM waves are produced by matter.

What about light produced by antimatter?  Would antimatter light react like antimatter? If so, that means antimatter EM waves would be repelled by matter and attracted to antimatter. So, there would be some basic difference between the two types of EM waves.

 

It would be interesting to compare matter EM waves and antimatter EM waves. We know that matter produces and interacts with associated EM waves. Let’s assume that antimatter produces and interacts with associated EM waves.  If the matter and antimatter EM waves ARE different, could matter detect antimatter EM waves? Could antimatter be used to detect matter EM waves?

 

What if we could not detect antimatter EM waves using matter? This might mean that when we view the universe we only see the matter in the universe and not the antimatter. Could antimatter EM waves be invisible to us poor matter beings?

 

Maybe we need to change the Conservation of Mass and Energy Law to the Conservation of Matter mass/energy and Antimatter mass/energy. Matter mass and associated EM waves would be positive and antimatter mass and associated energy would be negative.  That might give us a zero sum for all mass and energy in the universe.

possibly you are thinking of mirror matter which does postulate mirror photons and regular photons. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_matter

 

Quote

 Another effect of photon–mirror photon mixing is that it induces oscillations between positronium and mirror positronium. Positronium could then turn into mirror positronium and then decay into mirror photons.

The mixing between photons and mirror photons could be present in tree level Feynman diagrams or arise as a consequence of quantum corrections due to the presence of particles that carry both ordinary and mirror charges. In the latter case, the quantum corrections have to vanish at the one and two loop level Feynman diagrams, otherwise the predicted value of the kinetic mixing parameter would be larger than experimentally allowed.[18]

An experiment to measure this effect is currently being planned.[19]

 

[Markus Hanke]

The source of gravity is energy-momentum, and antimatter has the same kind of energy-momentum than ordinary matter does. This is easy to see if you consider that you need to invest energy to create antimatter in the first place. As such, it is fairly obvious that antimatter has the exact same gravitational effects as ordinary matter.

The situation would be different for exotic matter, which has negative energy-momentum, if such a thing existed (for which there is currently no evidence). But antimatter is not exotic matter, they are distinct concepts.

[Eise]

11 hours ago, Sensei said:

Annihilation of electrons and positrons is responsible for ~7.64% of entire energy emitted by the Sun.

I assume that the creation of electron-positron pairs then also cost ~7.64% of the energy of the sun (or the Beta⁺ decay of protons). So the net effect is zero.