Everything in the entire universe comes in pairs: Rich and poor, old and new, night and day, God and Satan, and even black and white. Matter is no different. It also has an opposite called antimatter. Antimatter is precisely the same as matter, but it has opposite charges. But watch out, if these two come in contact with each other, annihilation occurs. Depending upon the amount of specimen of antimatter, the explosion could be equal to about a nuclear warhead or bigger. Someday, scientists hope to harvest this energy, in controllable amounts, and use it as fuel because it would have no waste product at all. The one problem with this idea is that it costs more energy to make antimatter than it can produce itself at such small specimens. Storing it is incredibly difficult, also.
Antimatter is the opposite of regular matter, which every living thing on Earth is composed of. If you bread down a simple matter atom, there are protons, with a positive charge, and neutrons, with a neutral charge, in the nucleus and there are electrons, with negative charges, floating around the nucleus. If you break down a simple antimatter atom, there is a negatively charged proton and an antineutron in the nucleus and something called a positron, or positive electron, floating around the out side of the nucleus. When the masses of these two different atoms are compared to each other, they are the exact same. Antimatter is not commonly found just anywhere. In fact, astronomers have not even found antimatter in space. It has to be made in laboratories with special machines, called particle accelerators, which will not let antimatter and matter come into contact with each other. Antimatter also has very high amounts of stored energy (Britt).
In 1928, a British Physicist by the name of Paul Dirac wanted to know more about how particles behaved. After tons of research, he discovered that the electron in an atom could actually have an opposite, positive charge to it if the atom allowed it to. Once other scientists found out about Dirac’s hypothesis, nobody agreed with him. He stood by what he believed in and that was that every particle actually has an opposite, or an antiparticle. He also said that particles and antiparticles all have the same structure, just with different charges. A few years later, Dirac then proposed that there is actually another whole universe made completely of antimatter. The equations and hypotheses that Paul Dirac came up with are to be considered some of the first equations to be accurate with no previous knowledge of knowing that antimatter actually existed or being able to see it (Antimatter).
Today, scientists use a particle accelerator to make antimatter. An example of an accelerator is in France. It has a three mile radius, dug underground, and is simply just a metal tube, about three to four feet in diameter. What happens now is that the scientists put a controllable amount of particles into the tube and accelerate them with electromagnets so that they go about one and a half times around the circle in one second. Then they send out a few more particles and send them the opposite way. Once these particles hit each other, they collide and sometimes form a type of antimatter. This process costs lots of money and energy for just a few particles of antimatter (Angles and Demons).
Now scientists use a particle accelerator to make antimatter since it doesn’t occur in nature. They need just enough energy in a single collision of particles to make new particles because making particles takes just as much energy as breaking them down. When these particles do smash into each other, all the electrons and the nucleus will be floating around in fee space. Since the electrons and the nucleus are oppositely charged, they will repel one another. The larger that the nucleus is, the more positively charged it will be because it contains more protons. Also, the larger the nucleus is, the more repelled the electrons will be in different directions and larger angles. When this electron gets repelled and shoots off, it is going in a straight path with lots of momentum. If there is a nucleus in the path of the electron, the electron will not stop if it has enough momentum and they will collide. The electrons will give off excess energy as photons, which is basically a burst of energy like light. If these photons come into contact with the nucleus, they will turn into positron-electron pairs because the photons are negatively charged. Since they are opposite charges, they will cancel each other out and become a neutral, or zero, charge. If a positron-electron pair touches the remaining part of the nucleus, it will gain energy. When the pairs gain enough energy, they will break apart to form new nuclei with oppositely charged particles. Magnets will be used to grab these particles and put them into a separate, vacuumed container. This is the beginning of an antimatter particle. Since all of this happens at the speed of light, not all of the particles will get caught and converted into antimatter. This process is more of an attempt to make antimatter. Not always will particles be turned into antimatter (How to Make Antimatter).
Storing of antimatter is an incredibly difficult thing to accomplish. Antimatter cannot come into contact with any kind of matter or annihilation will occur, and this includes air. One type of storage that they can use to store antimatter is by using vacuumed canisters with electromagnets in the sides of it. When these magnets are turned on, the antimatter is repelled from all sides of the canisters and so it ‘floats’ in mid-air. In the book Angles and Demons by Dan Brown, these canisters are measured about one foot long with a five in diameter. There is also a battery pack on the device for the electromagnets. In order to keep the battery charged up, it would have to be kept on the main counsel. The reason that they had batteries attached to the canister is so that it could be easily transported easily to almost anywhere in the world. The only catch to this is that the batteries only last for twenty-four hours. Once the time was up, the battery dies, the electromagnets stop, and the antimatter comes into contact with the canister producing complete annihilation (CERN, Ask an Expert).
Annihilation: extinction (http://www.dictionary.com). Annihilation is complete disintegration. Since antimatter and matter have oppositely charged protons, neutrons, and electrons, they have a very strong attraction between them. Depending upon the size of the specimen, the energy released can be found by using the equation E = mc2. A one kilogram sample of matter and antimatter can produce 9^16 Joules, or a nine followed by sixteen zeros. One Joule is about equal to dropping a textbook onto the floor. One kilogram of gasoline can only release one billionth the amount of energy that antimatter and matter can. Once annihilation occurs, everything instantly vaporizes in the area (Matter/Antimatter Annihilation).
E = mc2 could possibly be the most famous equation in the science world, but many people have no idea what it means. It actually stands for total energy (Joules) is equal to mass (kg) times the speed of light squared (meters per second). The speed of light is always the same, ninety billion kilometers per second2. Albert Einstein came up with this equation in 1905. The equation was originally written m=L/c2, but he miswrote the E for an L. Then he rearranged the variables to come up with the current equation. Scientists had always thought that mass and energy were two completely different things that had nothing to do with each other at all. Einstein proved them wrong with this equation. He stated that mass and energy is simply the same thing just in different forms of one another. He even startled himself when he came up with this discovery. Using this equation, even the simple mass of a penny could make enough power for New York City for two years! Although a brilliant idea, it would be impossible because of the extreme pressures and temperatures are not found anywhere on Earth, or even in the Sun, which are needed to melt the penny completely and absorb all the energy (Energy).
One thought of the use of the energy that comes from antimatter is to make rockets that could be able to travel to Mars in six weeks instead of the usual six months. Students and professors are both studying this at the Pennsylvania State University. The rocket would be shaped in the form of the older space shuttles that are just straight up and down. The antimatter would have to be using magnets until it is needed. Then some sort of contraption would transport the antimatter to be annihilated, but still not touching matter while being transported. Some sort of metallic funnel would then focus all of the released energy to the rear of the rocket to push it foreword. The one negative thing about this process is that it costs sixty-two trillion dollars for just one gram of antimatter. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the major antimatter producers. The amount that they could make in one year is enough to keep a light bulb lit up for about fifteen minutes. The gamma rays that radiate from the annihilation are some of the most dangerous and harmful rays known to man because they break apart human cells and can become radioactive if exposed for an extended period of time. This will cause severe and permanent damage to vital organs. Since this is a very risky process, NASA is working on a rocket that puts positrons all around matter that produces less gamma rays, but a little less energy than antimatter. This second process is safer and more realistic than the other one. Ten milligrams of positrons would cost a quarter of a billion of dollars and a milligram of antimatter would cost about fifty billion dollars. Who would have guessed that the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek would set a real life example for the world today (Antimatter Rockets in Science Fiction).
Surprisingly, antimatter has many uses other than rocket ships and nuclear warheads. Antimatter is actually used for medical procedures. One such procedure is radiography, used for detection and a possible treatment for tumors. They shoot gamma rays from antimatter through you to show densities of bones and organs in your body, like an x-ray but more 3D. Another procedure is called positron emission tomography, or more commonly known as a PET scan. PET scans also detect cancer, mostly in the brain. This is done by injecting isotopes, or different forms, of carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen into your brain. The isotopes separate and become two photons. The image shown is several thousand photons in the part of the body that is cancerous. Both of these procedures cost several million dollars (Uses of Antimatter).
One of the most controversial subjects in the world of science is the topic of the Big Bang Theory. There are many hypotheses for this. Both science and religion has their own thoughts over the subject. One scientific thought is that there were equal amounts of matter and antimatter. These were focused on one point, about the size of a pinhole, and there was a big bang, hence the name the Big Bang Theory. After the bang, a small amount of matter was left and it multiplied to form the universe. It is thought that matter is still multiplying today and outer space is expanding. There have been no traces of antimatter in space yet, but it is possible that there is a symmetrical line in the universe with one half made of matter and the other made of antimatter. The visible universe appears to be composed of complete matter. The only problem with this theory is why did matter seem to dominate over antimatter? Was there just a speck of matter more than antimatter and that is why there is more matter than antimatter today in our universe? (Oard)
In conclusion, antimatter is a fascinating and highly dangerous subject. Antimatter is the same as matter but has opposite charges and was first thought to exist in 1928. When making antimatter, scientists use a particle accelerator, but they don’t always make antimatter every time that thy try to. Storage is almost as hard as making antimatter. The best part of this subject is that a television show from the twentieth century, Star Trek, actually had rocket ships fueled by antimatter. Who would have guessed that the Starship Enterprise would set an example for modern technology?