Why is Antimatter so strange? How to create it? Antimatter Animation

Can we produce Antimatter? Well, Antimatter is often produced naturally in space. During the radioactive decay of heavier isotopes, positrons are produced in large amounts. Breaking down neutrons into protons and electrons also produces a few anti-neutrinos. Anti-neutrinos are a common occurrence in the Beta decay of radioactive processes.

Another occurrence of antimatter is associated with cosmic rays. They are highly energized rays consisting of gamma radiation that travels at the speed of light throughout the universe. When the cosmic ray strikes the atmosphere of the earth or any planet, it ionizes the gases and produces a stream of particles such as the production of anti-proton in the Van Allen radiation belt. Thus the production of antimatter is often natural.

But we can also produce it artificially. A major amount of budget has been spent on the production of antimatter in the particle colliders. One of the methods of the production of anti-particle is hitting the high-speed electron on the gold target. Usually, the target particle is taken by the element with a high atomic mass. When an electron hits the nucleus of the target it gets energized, which leads to the production of photons. This photon goes through the decay process and decays into a proton-antiproton pair. Thereby, the law of conservation of energy gets satisfied.

Another method involves high accelerating protons that are made to collide with a heavy nucleus. The kinetic energy gained during the process leads to the formation of a proton-antiproton pair. Experimentally the production of anti-neutrons has been observed from the collision of two high-energy protons. In 1995, CERN successfully produced the negative counterpart of hydrogen known as anti-hydrogen.

It really costs a lot to produce antimatter. To produce just 10 milligrams of positron, we need $250 million and this is nothing compared to the production of 1 gram of antihydrogen which would cost $62.5 trillion. But the production of anti-particles can be very beneficial, like in medical application of treatment of cancer or production of advanced level weapon systems.

The very fundamental property of an antimatter particle is that it annihilates when combined with matter. This annihilation event produces a huge amount of energy that can be used as fuel for propulsion in futuristic space vehicles.

But how do we store antimatter? As we know, the meeting of antimatter and matter is catastrophic, so it is common sense that we cannot store antimatter in our normal containers. Usually, the particles like antiprotons are stored at a very low temperature and dispersed in the electron plasma. But the most suitable method used to store antimatter is the use of vacuum and magnetic traps.

Depending upon the charge of the anti-matter we can use a particular combination of electromagnetic fields to keep the particle away from the walls of the container. A vacuum is created and antimatter is made afloat in that vacuum balanced with the forces of magnetic and electric charges.