what happens when matter and anti-matter destroy eachother?

[DRU]

im sorry, i didnt know exactly where to post this, so just bear with me.

i am also very new to stuff like this, so if any of my questions are based on wrong info, just let me know. thanks

 

 

so when matter(M) comes in contact with anti-matter(AM), both are destroyed. the M and AM just inhabited this spot in space, and now, both are gone. so does this leave some sort of hole in space?

 

-drew

[swansont]

The mass is converted into other forms, be it other particles with some kinetic energy, or very often, photons (two, minimum, to conserve momentum). No hole.

 

You might want to avail yourself of the "search" function.

[[Tycho?]]

Gamma rays, usually.

 

This info is incredibly easy to find in other posts on these forums, and indeed on the net in general.

[Severian]

Boooom!

[YT2095]

here`s just a quicky though,

 

we get massive amounts of energy from this anihilation, does it require the Same energy to "Create" anti-matter?

 

or does it occur naturaly and we have a way to seperate it?

 

how is it "Made" "Synthed"?

[Klaynos]

here`s just a quicky though' date='

 

we get massive amounts of energy from this anihilation, does it require the Same energy to "Create" anti-matter?

 

or does it occur naturaly and we have a way to seperate it?

 

how is it "Made" "Synthed"?[/quote']

 

 

I'm not a particle physicist and I know there's a couple about to add to this/tell me I'm wrong so I'll keep it brief.

 

In a particle excellerator:

 

It takes us more energy to create it than we can get from it, mainly because the methods of making it are not 100% efficient. If they where 100% efficient then it would be exactly the same amount of energy.

 

I'm not sure what collisions would make it, someone else will have to field that...

 

In nuclear decay:

 

It is possible to get a Beta+ decay (I know that Sodium 22 decays in this way) from an unstable isotope. But this normally annihilates very quickly with an electron, releaseing photons of energy. In the case of Sodium 22, this is 2 photons of 0.51MeV, using this as a good reliable energy source is not very efficient at all, and requires you to have lumps of radioactive material in the middle of it....

[swansont]

Boooom!

 

We used "poof," and then pair production was "foop."

[swansont]

here`s just a quicky though' date='

 

we get massive amounts of energy from this anihilation, does it require the Same energy to "Create" anti-matter?

 

or does it occur naturaly and we have a way to seperate it?

 

how is it "Made" "Synthed"?[/quote']

 

The threshold to create a matter/antimatter pair is the energy you get in annihilation, but as Klaynos had said, in practice you need more; the excess appears as kinetic energy of the particles. You can get electrons/positron pairs just from high energy photons (> 1.02 MeV) passing by nuclei, and this happens fairly often.

[YT2095]

cool, thnx each

[Martin]

it is interesting

DRU asked what happens when e.g. a positron and electron annihilate and several highly knowledgeable people answered quite correctly poof, and boom. maybe sometimes a couple of gamma photons going in opposite directions (as per TYCHO)

 

these are answers at a phenomenological level---what do you see.

 

and basically this may be the current status of human knowledge

 

but, if he didnt know any better, DRU could come back and say "Yes, I know, but what HAPPENS?!!!"

 

How DOES a positron react with an electron so as to unravel its existence and, at the same time, unravel its own existence? What is matter made of and how can usual matter and anti matter do that?

 

have to go, back later

[Klaynos]

have to go' date=' back later[/quote']

 

That's a mean place to stop! I wanna know what the answers are!

[Martin]

That's a mean place to stop! I wanna know what the answers are!

 

thanks so much, I just got back. you must be kidding. there AREN'T any answers, right?

 

so the rest of this post is labeled with a warning: Contains Speculation.

 

I want to point to the work of a young Australian particle physicist named Bilson-Thompson. first everybody has to promise not to believe this, but to be maximally skeptical----which is how to approach new ideas.

 

and these ideas are not new new---he gives references to earlier work---but they are still novel and untested.

 

anyway Bilson-thompson give you an easy window to look in on a model where the different models are TANGLES----twisted braided tangles in whatever fibers might comprise space-----and the antiparticle is the OPPOSITE TANGLE of the tangle what is the particle. And the two can react like knots can react---one can cancel the other. that is oversimplification. He draws a lot of PICTURES and there are some pictures of reactions. It is called a topological preon model "Pre-on" means the thing that comes before, the things that quarks and electrons are made of. "Topological" means it has to do with twists and tangles and knots.

 

Here is the paper. this was the first in a series. there is later work by others.

 

http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0503213

A topological model of composite preons

Sundance O.Bilson-Thompson

9 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Lett. B

 

"We present a modification of the preon model proposed independently by Shupe and Harari. A basic dynamics is developed by treating the binding of preons as topological in nature and identifying the substructure of quarks, leptons and gauge bosons with elements of the braid group B_3. Topological considerations and a straightforward set of assumptions lead directly to behaviour consistent with much of the known phenomenology of the Standard Model. The preons of this model may be viewed as composite in nature, and composed of sub-preons, representing exactly two levels of substructure within quarks and leptons."

 

even though this work is very on the edge, Sundance himself is no dummy. When Franck Wilczek went to Stockholm to give his acceptance talk he showed computer animations of QCD that Sundance helped produce. He was somewhere in the credits. Basically he is a young mainstream HEP researcher who just has a lot of nerve. It is a weird idea that an electron could be made of THREE OTHER THINGS "preons"

 

so, there is no answer, but keep your hopes up

 

there must be dozens of good ideas, I just happened to run into this

[Klaynos]

thanks so much' date=' I just got back. you must be kidding. there AREN'T any answers, right?

[/quote']

 

 

Yeah I was kidding I do like the speculations though

[5614]

thanks so much, I just got back. you must be kidding. there AREN'T any answers, right?

Right.

[Rocket Man]

i read that protons and anti protons, it's the quarks that have the anti particles.

up-quarks react with anti-up-quarks, down-quarks react with anti-down-quarks.

 

most particles including leptons have anti particles except photons.

you can make anti matter with light but you need to produce normal matter in the same quanities.

slam a gamma ray with the same mass energy as the sum of the pair's mass into an atom, you get pair production. (add some extra energy to the photon to give the particles momentum away form each other so they dont react again)

 

CERN had an antiproton decellerator, did a few experiments too, but this wasnt even 1% efficient, about 100 atoms per day. not enough to do anything though.

 

i did some math, via E=MC^2, 1 kg = 9*10^16 joules.

this much energy from grid power would cost about $25M