antimatter

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antimatter

Postby papernuke » Sat Oct 28, 2006 3:51 am

what is antimatter? i read in google somewhere that it was the opposite of matter. so an electron is matter and its possitively charged. then, wouldnt antimatter for the electron just be a negatively charged electron?
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Postby Nick » Sat Oct 28, 2006 11:10 am

A year ago I read up on it, quite an interesting topic. I found this website extremely useful
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Postby PWrong » Sat Oct 28, 2006 11:21 am

then, wouldnt antimatter for the electron just be a negatively charged electron?

That's right. It's called a positron. When an electron and a positron collide, they annihilate each other and produce a photon (light).
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Postby houserichichi » Sat Oct 28, 2006 4:54 pm

They actually produce two photons ;) though other possibilities may occur, it just so happens that the two photon combination is the most probable.
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Postby PWrong » Sun Oct 29, 2006 9:53 am

I guess that shows how much I learned in particle physics last semester :oops:.
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Postby houserichichi » Sun Oct 29, 2006 8:03 pm

Conservation of energy man!
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Postby papernuke » Mon Nov 06, 2006 4:18 am

houserichichi wrote:They actually produce two photons ;) though other possibilities may occur, it just so happens that the two photon combination is the most probable.


I thought they produced a gamma ray burst.
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Postby PWrong » Mon Nov 06, 2006 5:13 am

Lol, not exactly. A gamma ray burst is a massive star explosion. Like a supernova, but bigger and with gamma rays.

Gamma rays are a type of photon. So an electron colliding with a positron can produce a pair of gamma rays, but that's not what we mean by a gamma ray burst.
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Postby papernuke » Tue Nov 07, 2006 3:58 am

I meant a gamma ray, not a gamma ray burst.
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