• Question: What is antimatter and what does it do?

    Asked by desorgherm to Christina, Colin, Jess, Samaneh, Steve on 21 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Steven Gardner

      Steven Gardner answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      Antimatter is the name for a group of particles that have the same mass as their matter partners but opposite everything else. For example, the anti-proton has the same mass as the proton but negative charge (they also have opposite another property called spin, which is why you can have antineutrons too). Nearly every particle has it’s own anti-particle.

      When matter and anti-matter collide they completely destroy each other and turn in gamma rays.

    • Photo: Christina Pagel

      Christina Pagel answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      And one really cool thing is that the equations of physics say that you can think of an anti-electron (called a positron) as a normal electron travelling backwards in time!

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