EXTRAORDINARY PREDICTION: Antimatter

“Some extraordinary predictions radically alter our perspective of analysing things in a better way.”

Paul Dirac predicted the existence of antimatter with his theory of relativistic quantum mechanics combining equation of motion of electrons and wave function in 1928. Just like x^2= 9 having two solutions 3,-3. Surprisingly, normal matter’s birth twin antimatter look, feel similar to it, having same properties and behaviour towards gravity but with opposite charge.

During big bang equal amount of matter and antimatter would have been formed but their collision leads to annihilation. However, matter somehow managed to survive. In 1932, Carl Anderson confirmed the existence of antimatter with his experiment of passing cosmic particles through a cloud chamber filled with water vapours surrounded by an electromagnet resulting in ionising particles moving in circular trajectories and took a photograph.

The photograph showed a particle with the same mass as an electron moving in the wrong direction and termed it position. Anderson’s evidence of positron indicated antimatter to be taken seriously in the matter dominated universe. Many antimatter particles such as Antiquark, Antineutrino, Antileptons, Antihydrogen atoms have already been discovered.

In 2011, CERN launched Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer aiming to detect antimatter in cosmic rays. It spotted a boom of antimatter near the centre of our galaxy. In 2016, it created 309 antihydrogen atoms which were held for 17 minutes. Moreover, CERN has successfully made 10 nanograms of antimatter which could glow a light bulb for 4 hours.

90 trillion joule energy is required to create 1 gram of antimatter costing around 62.5 billion dollar. 1 gram of antimatter has potential to blast equal to 100 nuclear booms exploded together. It is used in Positron Emission Tomography or PET scan and can also be incredibly used as 100% efficient fuel in interstellar space missions.