What Is Antimatter, and How Do We Know It Exists, Essay Example

In December 1927 Paul Dirac, British physicist, first contributed to the discovery and development of antimatter. Antimatter consists of many particles like antielectrons, which are also called to positrons, and antiprotons. Every matter has corresponding and matching antimatter, which obtains completely opposite properties. For example, if we refer to hydrogen atom, than it will have the antihydrogen as the antimatter and all of its particles will be totally opposite. In fact, antimatter is occurring in nature only in very small numbers, thus being naturally formed when some elements of materials radioactively decay. However, it appears that the antimatter of such a kind is too little for producing considerable amounts of energy. Whenever it annihilates with the equivalent matter they release a huge amount of energy as a result of both particle’s mass conversion. Furthermore, antimatters occur after a very short period of time, thus making it inadequate for collection and experimentation processes. Consequently, this triggered further research and study on how to produce big quantities of antimatter within certain controlled environment.

There is some evidence that antimatter does exist in our contemporary world. For example, our current practical physics model implies that antimatter particles actually exist. On the other hand, we can produce relatively small amounts of antimatter in particle colliders. However, people are predominantly creating positrons, for antipositrons are harder to produce because of their bigger mass. In fact, the energy produced as a result of colliding of antimatter and its corresponding matter could be used to generate electricity, thus implementing advanced equipment and technology.

References

Calle, C. I. (2001). Superstrings and other things: A guide to physics. CRC Press.