Antimatter
Antimatter conists of the opposite particles than normal matter. Antiparticles have the opposite charge of their corresponding particles, but are identical concerning mass and spin. If particle and antiparticle meet, they destroy each other and produce energy as photons. Likewise, particle/antiparticle pairs can form from high energy, as occurs in particle collisions. A famous antiparticle is the positively charged counterpart of the electron, the positron (e+ or β+). This occurs at the radioactive devay of some isotopes, which are too light.
Antiquarks are marked by an overline, like u for the antiup. If neutrinos and antineutrinos are identical or different isn't known for sure yet. Some particles like photons don't have antiparticles or respectively are identical to them. Antiparticles frequently occur in nature, albeit mostly very short. More complex blocks of matter, like antiprotons, hardly arise.
Today, particles and antiparticles always form together. So it's quite puzzling, that in the whole universe we only observe matter and no antimatter, apart from the very short-lived antiparticles. To all appearances, at the beginning of the universe there was slightly more matter than antimatter (about 1.000.000.001 to 1.000.000.000). Whereas nearly all of the matter and antimatter annihilated, a small amount of matter remained. Of this, we and everything around us is made.
Page last changed on March 06. 2010
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↑ Particle Zoo: Atom, Fermions, Hadrons, Baryons, Proton, Neutron, Other Baryons, Quarks, Up-Quark, Down-Quark, Strange-Quark, Charm-Quark, Bottom-Quark, Top-Quark, Leptons, Electron, Muon, Tauon, Neutrinos, Electron-Neutrino, Muon-Neutrino, Tauon-Neutrino, Bosons, Mesons, Pion, Kaon, D-Meson, Other Mesons, Gauge Bosons, Photon, Gluon, W-Boson, Z-Boson, Graviton, Higgs-Boson, Antimatter, Dark Matter, Dark Energy
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