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Modern Physics
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keshav
Cool goIITian

Joined: 30 Nov 2008
Posts: 86
18 Mar 2010 15:24:04 IST
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yes it is , CERN claims to have it . Try Wikipedia for more ...do it its interesting.
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31 Jan 2011 19:18:27 IST
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In particle physics, antimatter is the extension of the concept of the antiparticle to matter, where antimatter is composed of antiparticles in the same way that normal matter is composed of particles. For example, a positron (the antiparticle of the electron or e+
) and an antiproton (p) can form an antihydrogen atom in the same way that an electron and a proton form a normal matter hydrogen atom. Furthermore, mixing matter and antimatter can lead to the annihilation of both in the same way that mixing antiparticles and particles does, thus giving rise to high-energy photons (gamma rays) or other particle–antiparticle pairs.
There is considerable speculation as to why the observable universe is apparently almost entirely matter, whether there exist other places that are almost entirely antimatter instead, and what might be possible if antimatter could be harnessed. At this time, the apparent asymmetry of matter and antimatter in the visible universe is one of the greatestunsolved problems in physics. The process by which this asymmetry between particles and antiparticles developed is called baryogenesis.
The idea of negative matter has appeared in past theories of matter, theories which have now been abandoned. Using the once popular vortex theory of gravity the possibility of matter with negative gravity was discussed by William Hicks in the 1880s. Between the 1880's and the 1890's, Karl Pearson proposed the existence of "squirts" (sources) and sinks of the flow of aether. The squirts represented normal matter and the sinks represented negative matter, a term which Pearson is credited with coining. Pearson's theory required a fourth dimension for the aether to flow from and into.
The term antimatter was first used by Arthur Schuster in two rather whimsical letters to Nature in 1898, in which he coined the term. He hypothesized antiatoms, whole antimatter solar systems and discussed the possibility of matter and antimatter annihilating each other. Schuster's ideas were not a serious theoretical proposal, merely speculation, and like the previous ideas, differed from the modern concept of antimatter in that it possessed negative gravity.
The modern theory of antimatter begins in 1928, with a paper by Paul Dirac. Dirac realised that his relativistic version of the Schrödinger wave equation for electrons predicted the possibility of antielectrons. These were discovered by Carl D. Anderson in 1932 and named positrons (a contraction of "positive electrons"). Although Dirac did not himself use the term antimatter, its use follows on naturally enough from antielectrons, antiprotons etc. A complete periodic table of antimatter was envisaged by Charles Janet in 1929.












