Antimatter is a material
composed of antiparticles. They have the same mass as particles of
matter such as leptons and baryons. They also look and act the same
as the regular particles in matter, but their electrical charge is
the opposite of the regular particles. For each and every particle
has corresponding antiparticle of same mass and properties with
opposite electrical charge.
An antiparticle in
antimatter is same as the elementary particle in matter of same mass
and properties with opposite electrical charge of its corresponding
elementary particle. For example, the antiparticle of the electron is
the antielectron or positron. The positron has same mass and spin as
that of electron but the electron has negative charge while the
positron has positive charge.
The antiparticle of
proton is known as antiproton with same mass and spin of a proton but
having having negative charge instead of positive charge in proton.
Antiproton is the nucleus of an Antihydrogen with positive charged
positron orbiting around it.
Even electrically
neutral particles, such as neutron are not identical to their
antiparticle. For example, neutron is made up of ordinary particles
called quarks, while antineutron is made up of antiparticles called
antiquarks. In this case, the net charge in both case is zero but the
quarks inside the neutrons have opposite spins to the antiquarks in
the antineutrons.
The encounters between a
particle and an antiparticle lead to both of them being destroyed,
but this gives rise to high energy photons(gamma rays), neutrinos and
lower mass particle-antiparticle pairs. Annihilation is the name
given to the process that occurs when a particle and its antiparticle
equivalent collide. The collision between a particle and an
antiparticle makes energy release. Two types of annihilation
includes the annihilation of electrons and positrons and the
annihilation of protons and antiprotons.
An universal truth,
charge is conserved, so it is not possible to create an antiparticle
without either destroying another particle of the same charge or by
the simultaneous creation of both a particle and its antiparticle,
which can occur in particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron
Collider at CERN in Europe.
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