Hi Again , I'll try to limit the amount of questions I ask but here is one that I really need some clarification on as I've been hearing alot about the Large Hadron Collider and because nothing that I have read so far has shed any light on this for me.
What exactly is "Anti-Matter"?

I think there are lots of simple explanations of what anti-matter is on the Internet. Here is an easy to understand site with lots of explanation.

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As above, so below

Thanks for the link, it looks like an amazing resource

Why?

This site has dozens of highly knowledgeable and enthusiastic contributers. So if you tire one out with lots of questions, another is sure to pop up.

We also get such a lot of trolls, kooks, woo-woos and misanthropes, that anyone coming here with an honest intent to learn is like a breath of fresh air!

So ask as many questions as you like! (Of them, not me. I'm neither knowledgeable nor enthusiastic, more like ignorant and lazy. )

One way to think of anti-matter is normal matter that moves backward through time. A better way to think of it is that anti-matter is just another form of matter, which opposite charge.

So an electron moving forward is equivalent to a positron moving backwards.

An interest fact that loosely ties into anti-matter is that if you could swap all the negative charges for positive charges and vice-versa, the forces would be the same.

hi!

have an out-of-body experience and you will know what anti- matter is.Thought is an energy, and consciousness is in the astral body, "you" are separate from your physical body.The body is physical matter,"you" are non physical matter ..

PL

Wikipedia is also a great place to start when you have a question:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-matter

Paul, the Q&A section assumes answers in conformance with mainstream science, or at least close thereto. Your rather odd opinion above is decidedly non-mainstream science, in more ways than one! If you can provide a mainstream answer to someone's question, feel free! Otherwise, don't!

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Adding to what Cougar said, you just can't go around redefining words to mean whatever you like. The OP obviously meant to ask about anti-matter as anti-particles.

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As above, so below

Quick answer, I hope I get it right:

Everyday matter is made of a variety of "fundamental" particles - you'll have heard of electrons, protons, and neutrons, and there are many others which are -not- everyday.

(For instance, an atom is a nucleus of one or more protons, an approximately similar number of neutrons - except for a hydrogen atom which can have one proton and between 0 and 2 neutrons - and one electron for each proton. Technically, if the number of electrons is different - which can happen in an ordinary chemical reaction - it's not an atom but an ion. For instance, table salt, sodium chloride, consists of sodium ions and chlorine ions.)

The "fundamental" particles mostly seem in fact to be made up of particles called "quarks", but the last that I heard, no one had found a single quark. (But that was some time ago, and they wouldn't necessarily come tell me.) So we can skip that.

Anyway, the everyday particles have twin particle types that are much more rarely seen - an antiproton, an anti-electron (positron), an antineutron. Those particles behave like the more familiar particles but have opposite electric charge to their twin (electrons and protons have electric charge - that's what keeps electrons on atoms, opposite charges attract), some other opposite properties, and if a particle meets its own anti-twin particle type then the particles cease to exist, producing energy - according to Einstein, that energy was in there all along, that's the famous E = m c squared.

By the way, anti-particles don't travel backwards in time or anything funny like that, except in bad science ficttion stories. They are just like ordinary matter, but don't try to pick them up, you'll be sorry. (Actually, any significant quantity of anti-matter would explode in air.)

Anti-particles are produced in some nuclear reactions - don't ask me to explain why, but some radioactive elements release anti-particles, and I think they appear in the "solar wind". I think it makes sense in quarks.

Scientists have been puzzled why the universe (as far as we see it) has only the everyday particles, since their opposites seem to be just as good. A planet could be made of anti-matter if there was enough anti-matter. But if there were both sorts of common particles around, our kind and the anti, around, then we'd see spectacular explosions where they meet. As it is, even anti-atoms don't exist in nature.

I think the current theory for this has some positive evidence - that in fact the anti-particles of everyday matter particles are -not- just the same as their twins, and there is a small bias against anti-particles. So after a whole lot of simultaneous creations of particles and corresponding anti-particles from energy (I forgot to mention that, didn't I?), at the beginning of the universe, there are lots of particles left over in the universe without an anti-particle made at the same time. And those are the particles that Earth and human beings are made of. At least, those protons, neutrons, electrons. Mostly.

However, the last I heard about -that-, they couldn't get the calculation to come out right and use the theory to "predict" the universe as it actually exists.

I have some nitpicks


This is true- but it also pertains to your next comment:
Atoms or particles?
Anti-particles have been observed in nature and in our galaxy.
Fraser recently had posted an article on this, in fact- I'll look for it.
I'm not saying you're wrong- just wondering...

everything is made of energy including "you" YOU are not material..your dreams,experiences,regrets,desire.How would you describe thought?This is still mainstream maybe I am looking at things a bit differently from a different angle.

think of energy and its forms...solid,liquid,gas, etheric

H20..water goes from solid,liquid,gas....different states of matter...still H2O

"you" are etheric in nature..human BEING!

The body is the vehicle.."you" are the driver

This is the kind of woo one should run screaming from. Believe this, and you'll believe any darn fool thing.

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Olsen the moderator.

I love your response's!!

I have had an OBE (it's common) and you will KNOW what your really made of..give you a clue soul travel is not wise...you maybe found dead of unknown causes.

I have had involuntary OBE

I enjoyed Orange Sunshine and Windowpane myself back in the day, but there is a thing called physical reality.

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Olsen the moderator.

But did you pay attention to them?

This section is for space and astronomy related question and answers. Why do you keep posting off topic here?

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

There is a current article (in Science, I think) the detection of anti-matter in distant galaxies as experimental evidence for the existance of dark matter, dark matter seems to react with itself to produce anti-matter. I guess if the LHC can shed light on dark matter it will be producing anti-matter as a by-product. I know nothing of the mechanisms for this process, but possibly we will be learning a lot more about this stuff as the machine starts working.

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plenty of woo, at the hotel hoagaland...

..who knows you might hit on a parallel universe(antimatter) which is something that dreams give insight into...once again yogic science with different planes of existence that penetrate physical REALITY.

sorry the ref is New Scientist 12 August 2008 p8. refers to PAMELA finding more anti-matter in our galaxy indicating dark matter particles undergoing annhilation. Also referred to in this Universe Today thread.

forget the astral yogi jibberish, pls..

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plenty of woo, at the hotel hoagaland...

Well, let's ask some simple questions here to try to bring this to some order of semblence...what ever that means...LOL.

If Neutrons are 'neutral' ie; no positive or negative charge, then how can there be an "Anti-Neutron"???

If, as the first 3 minutes say, that out of all the anti-matter/matter collisions, only baryons were left to make the electrons/protons/neutrons, and then Protons are made of 'quarks' up/down, then how can proton/proton collisions produce "Positons"?

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RussT
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Everything is, as it should be, otherwise, it wouldn't be!

Anti-neutrons are composed of anti-quarks. The antiquarks carry the opposite charge of quarks, but in the anti-neutron they still add up to zero.

As for how baryons produce anti-leptons (electrons/ neutrinos) that is all down to the weak force and lepton and baryon number conservation.

SO... If you have followed this thread and its recommended links.... You will now have a much better understanding of the subject.
As is often the case, the problem is in the name. Anti-mater. That does not give you a accurate idea to start with. Other-mater might be a better starting place.
Generally in life things do matter, or they do not... Different-mater.
That seemingly irrelevant imbalance between negative and positive may turn out to be what unlocked the Big Bang in the first place. Anti-mater, negative mater, as you can see... there is a lot to learn. Thats a positive.

I don't mind and you don't matter!!

yes,you do...I'll be nice!

the thing that has AlWAYS existed is ENERGY!...on one level or another...

Oh, I think he meant per thread, or per Opening Post, which is usually a good idea. Certainly there's no limit to threads started that ask specific, on-topic questions.

Well, within reason.

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

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Forming opinions as we speak