Antimatter

[Mr Skeptic]

How would cosmic rays create antiparticles?

 

Same as with particle accelerators. I understand that some cosmic rays are more powerful than what we can produce in a particle accelerator, though that may no longer be true. A few of them go so fast that people expected them to interact with cosmic background radiation to produce particle pairs, and slow them down. But with a matter target, lots of cosmic rays would have the energy for pair production.

 

And the electric bill to run all those magnet tensors is HUGE.

 

I don't doubt it, but in theory, you could instead extract energy from decellerating the particles. It would, of course, involve a very large decellerator.

[Riogho]

Same as with particle accelerators. I understand that some cosmic rays are more powerful than what we can produce in a particle accelerator, though that may no longer be true. A few of them go so fast that people expected them to interact with cosmic background radiation to produce particle pairs, and slow them down. But with a matter target, lots of cosmic rays would have the energy for pair production.

 

It would be disgustingly hard to get a high enough concentration of cosmic rays, and when your anti particle was made, it would immediatly annihilate by the surrounding matter...

 

What are you saying we could make this in, because I'm not seeing any machine that could take cosmic rays and shoot em in a vacuum AND have it create enough energy on impact with something to make matter and antimatter >.<

 

But my engineering is pretty bad.

 

 

 

 

 

I don't doubt it, but in theory, you could instead extract energy from decellerating the particles. It would, of course, involve a very large decellerator.

 

It definitely wouldn't even be a 1:1 ratio of the energy needed to run the damn thing

[Prof.Marvel]

Are antimatters present anywhere in the universe. And is it really possible to create antimatters in Earth.

 

It is my understanding that a positron is the antimatter counterpart of an electron and they certainly do exist on our planet. Positrons are the basis for PET (positron emission tomography) scans.

[Janus]

It is my understanding that a positron is the antimatter counterpart of an electron and they certainly do exist on our planet. Positrons are the basis for PET (positron emission tomography) scans.

 

Positrons are emited naturally during some radioactive decays, this is known as beta+ emission. It happens when a proton in a nucleus converts to a neutron and positron.

 

PET scans work by injecting such a positron emittng isotope into the person, then scanning the body for the gamma radiation emitted when the positrons mutally anihilate with electrons.

[antimatter]

Wouldn't that cause a massive amount of damage?

It would spark a chain reaction of annihilation...that would be terrible...

[Riogho]

How would it be a chain reaction?

[antimatter]

Oh my mistake, I think I just got confused with something else,

sorry.

 

What I meant to say before I got confused was that wouldn't there have to be an enormous amount of antiparticles for the gamma rays to become noticeable?

[Riogho]

An electron-positron annihilation would cause quite a few gamma rays, enough to be detected anyways.

 

Though I think more then one annihilation is occuring, I don't know for sure though.

[Klaynos]

An electron-positron annihilation would cause quite a few gamma rays, enough to be detected anyways.

 

Though I think more then one annihilation is occuring, I don't know for sure though.

 

I'm pretty sure it's 2, or maybe 4.... in nearly all cases....

[antimatter]

I mean, it would make sense.

While one electron-positron annihilation would be noticeable, I don't think it would be particularily useful.

I do think there are multiple annihilations going on.

 

I'm pretty sure it's 2, or maybe 4.... in nearly all cases....

 

Come to think of it, how large are these annihilations, if only 2-4 are used...?

[Klaynos]

Certainly in the case I investigated a couple of years ago it was 2 gamma photons per annihilation... each one was 0.51MeV and they where moving at exactly opposite directions to each other.

[antimatter]

Alright, in that case it makes more sense, I thought the gamma ray emmision was much much smaller.

Thanks for clearing that up.

[dirtyamerica]

I read an article recently about matter/antimatter. The author asked something like: If our immediate universe is made up of matter then where did all the antimatter go? or why do we have excess matter left over?

 

Sorry, I don't remember the source of the article but this does seem like a good place to ask.

[Klaynos]

I read an article recently about matter/antimatter. The author asked something like: If our immediate universe is made up of matter then where did all the antimatter go? or why do we have excess matter left over?

 

Sorry, I don't remember the source of the article but this does seem like a good place to ask.

 

That question is one of the current great mysteries of astrophysics..