November 6, 2018 • 32 mins
Is anti-matter real or science fiction? Is it dangerous, or delicious?
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
There's a mysterious form of matter in the universe and
it has really strange properties. I've heard of this kind
of matter, and I heard that if it touches regular matter,
it explodes. Yes, and we can only make it in
super fancy particle colliders. Apparently we don't even know why
it exists. Who even asked for it? Who ordered that?
(00:29):
Who ordered that? I'll have what she's having, but the opposite,
I don't know if some people want to explode him.
(00:54):
And I'm Daniel and this is Daniel and Jrge explained
the universe where we tackle the higher universe and explain
it to you today on the program Antimatter. What is it?
Not Antifa, not antigua, but anti matter. That's right, These
are all good anti jokes. Actually typed in anti into
(01:17):
Google earlier to see what the completions were, and anti
matter was like the sixth one. Yeah, are curious about
antigua and antifa and uh and other sorts of anti stuff. Yeah,
So what is it? Um? What does it have against
regular matter? And more important, where is it? And what
(01:38):
can it do for you? Yeah? Besides blowing you up.
So apparently if you touch anti matter, you're going to
explode an a ball of light. That's right, Folks out
there listening to this, if you're sitting next to a
blob of anti matter, don't touch it, run label it
safely for other people, and then run away really fast.
(01:58):
We are very pro safety this podcast. We want to
explain the universe, not explode the universe or kill everybody
in the universe. All right, But before we begin talking
about anti matter, we went out in the street. We
asked people, what do you know about anti matter? What
is anti matter? Here's what they had to say. I
guess matters the matter, So no matter. It's like the
(02:21):
black hole. I mean, I've heard it in relational like space,
but I couldn't define it at all. It's like the
opposite It's like a proton has more mass in electron,
but it's the opposite charge. The electron has a positive charge,
but it's like the lighter at all. All right, So
most people seem to have heard of the term antimatter.
That that's that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's really cool that
(02:42):
people have heard of anti matter, though almost nobody seems
to know what it is. Everyone seems to have an
idea that it's like regular matter, but kind of like
the opposite, like it's it's like a weird kind of matter. Yeah,
And this is one of my favorite things about antimatter
is that it's a science concept that has penetrated into
(03:02):
popular culture and mostly kept the science intact. Like the
things people know about antimatter are mostly true, which is
not the case for a lot of other things in science,
you know, quantum mechanics and relativity and all this stuff.
People have distorted ideas from science fiction. Well, I think
one of the biggest instances of it that I've seen
in movies it it was on that movie The Da
(03:23):
Vinci Code, or the sequel to The Da Vinci Code,
Angels and Demons. Yeah, where they were there was somebody
trying to like harness antimatter and make a bomb out
of it. That's right. And you know that movie Angels
and Demons starts at the Atlas Detector at CERN, which
is where I were, which is pretty awesome. Did you
get a cameo? I I didn't get to meet Tom
(03:43):
Hanks and I didn't get to be in the movie.
But it's also always fun to see your workplace turned
into a science fiction movie because and in the version
of my workplace that they have at in the movie.
They have all these fancy displays and cool interfaces and
retinal scans, all this stuff, and everyone's wearing like white
lab coats, right and safety as they should. That's right.
(04:06):
You can't do science without white lab coat. Yeah, you
don't want to get any anti matter on your clothes
unless they're anti closing your antiverson. Science fiction is always
an inspiration for real life, so there's nothing wrong there. Um.
But there are some elements to Angels and Demons which
are correct. Okay, so Angels and Demons got correct that
we do make anti matter at certain though not enough
(04:28):
to make a bomb. We make anti matter at certain Yes,
we produce it, but not enough to make a bomb.
That's very important distinction. And if antimatter collides with matter,
it does annihilate and turn into energy, so you can
make explosives. Yes, that is all actually true. You can
make a bomb, but you're not making a bomb right now.
We have no plans to make bombs. Um. But but yes,
(04:49):
technically antimatter can be used to make engines or weapons. Okay,
well we'll get to how that all works, but let's
maybe talk about what is it. The simplest way to
describe antom matter is just that it's the opposite of matter, right,
every particle, most of matter is made of particles, right, Protons, neutrons, electrons,
this kind of stuff. And inside the protons and neutrons
(05:11):
we have corks. And the amazing thing is that each
of these particles has sort of a twin, except it's
the evil twin, the opposite twin, like a mirror twin. Yes,
like a mirror twin. It's not exactly the same sound,
identical twin. It's a mirror twin because it has a
lot of the properties of it are flipped. So the
electron is negatively charged. The antimatter version of the electron,
(05:32):
called the positron, it has a positive charge. And so
you're exactly right. The antimatter is like matter, but with
the opposite charge, and some other aspects of it are
also flipped. So it's not just the electrical charge that's
flipped like plus and minus like in a battery, or
like an electron and a proton. It's like they have
other things about them that are flipped. That's right, because
(05:54):
the electric charge is what tells you whether something feels electromagnetism,
which is one of the four forces. But there are
other charges, right, there are other forces and so other
charges exactly other forces, each of which have their own charge.
So for example, gravity has a charge we call that mass,
but you can't flip mass because you can't have negative mass.
Antimatter particles have positive mass, but the other forces, like
(06:17):
the weak force, it has a charge called the hypercharge,
and anti particles can have the opposite hypercharge as well.
So every particle seems to have this antiparticle, Like the
electron is the positron, and the corks have the anti corks,
and so antimatter are these particles that are exactly analogous
to the particles we know and love and are made
(06:37):
up out of, except there seemed to be the opposite.
So like if a cork, regular cork um feels all
of the forces, right, I think regular cork feels all
the forces. You have gravity, electromagnetism, weak force, and strong force.
And there's a version of the cork that is the
anti cork that has like, uh, the opposite charge, opposite hypercharge,
opposite color charge. And that's when a play matter is.
(07:00):
It's like versions of regular matter that have everything flipped
to them exactly. And the key thing is that we
associate them together. We say, like, well, here's the particle,
we call it the electron. Here's another particle we call
it the positron. And the connection between them is something
that we've made, right, We say, these two are related,
they're similar in some way, they're there's there's a pattern here,
(07:22):
And we look for these patterns all the time because
we're trying to explain the larger story, right, We're trying
to understand what is what we are seeing mean, and
so we're always looking for patterns. But what is the
thing they have in common? The is it like the
mass or you know, just the kind of the arrangement
of these charges. Why do we associate them together? Yeah,
great question. They have the same mass, and you're exactly right,
(07:44):
as far as we can tell, the electron of the
positron of exactly the same mass, and they also have
the same magnitude of the charge, Like the electron is
charge minus one positronic charge plus. The quarks have these
fractional charges two thirds one third and the anti quarks
has the opposite, you know, minus two thirds or plus
one third. So they really do come in pairs. Oh,
(08:05):
I see, So it's not just that the flip it's
like flipped exactly. Yeah, that's why it's a kind of special. Yeah,
it's it's like if you if you discovered one day
that you had a twin, right, and you didn't know
about it your whole life, that would be pretty interesting.
You'd wonder like, oh, why do I have a twin?
I would be like, there can only be one. Well,
you wouldn't go out necessarily and kill your twin immediately
(08:26):
because you're worried about your inheritance. I mean, I don't
know how the things work in your family, or just
convince them to try difer in line of work. Probably please,
we don't need another cartoonist. Um, what if you found
out that everybody in town had a twin, right, then
you would conclude, oh, there's something to this, there's something
twinny about my town, or my country or my species. Right.
(08:46):
And that's the amazing thing about anti matter is that
not just the electron has an antiparticle, but the quarks
and every particle we've discovered so far has an antiparticle.
So this's some deep symmetry of the universe. It's not
just like, hey, look at this pattern we found. It's
veeling of something. So everything that we know and see
and touch, um, there's a there can be a version
of it that's like the opposite. Yeah, exactly, there's an
(09:09):
opposite version, and not opposite in the way like you
know you had a gross breakfast this morning, there's an
opposite version where you had a delicious breakfast. You know,
it's opposite in the sense that it's made out of
the opposite particles. So right, first, we're talking about antiparticles,
and we can talk about anti matter, which is stuff
made out of antiparticles. So that's a cool idea that
you can have like an anti electron, like inform an
(09:30):
anti atom with an anti proton that's made out of
anti corks, right exactly, And then you can have an
anti Jorge making an anti podcast if we collide with
this podcast, which we anti entertaining. Unfortunately, no, that's terrible
anti educational. Yeah, Like, you could have an atom that's
(09:53):
made out of antiparticles and it would sort of like
look almost the same way as a regular atom, right,
it would would have that same kind of picture of
the protons and the neutrons, in the middle anti versions
of those with anti electrons flying around it and um
and you could have like elements, right, like you could
have anti oxygen and anti carbon, right. Is that the
(10:15):
that's the question. The question is does antimatter mirror matter exactly?
Mean it doesn't have all the same interactions and same
properties as far as we can tell. It does. As
far as we can tell, it does, But that's something
we're still working on because there isn't a lot of
antimatter around to study. So yes, we've seen anti anti electrons,
we've seen anti protons, and people have done experiments where
(10:36):
they've made anti hydrogen and created it and studied it,
and so far it looks exactly like hydrogen except for
it's made out of the antiparticles, like it has the
same energy levels and the same behavior. Beyond that, it
gets pretty tough because it's hard to make anti matter
and it's hard to keep it around because anti matter
will annihilate with normal matter. So we still have a
lot of open questions, like does it really exist in
(10:58):
the same way as matter? We know there has to
be some differences because the universe is made out of
matter and not antimatter. We don't know why we haven't
figured out what those differences are. But that's exactly the
course of a study, and so far it looks like
it matches everything that matter can do, antimatter can also do.
I have so many questions for you, but before we
dive in, let's take a short break. So there's a
(11:32):
lot of questions there. So first of all, like, how
do you make antimatter? How do you guys make antimatter
at Serain in Geneva. Yeah, well we take our lamp
and we rub it and the genie comes out and
we just ask it nicely for anti matter. I mean
this how you do science. That is how they do
science and Disneyland. Um, so antimatter is not that unusual.
(11:52):
It just doesn't live very long. Like antimatter is being
created all the time, Like thunderstorms create antimatter. Like what
do you mean lightning creates antimatter? Yeah, lightning can create antimatter.
Like how does it get created by lightning? Well, anytime
you have a very high energy photon, for example, a
photon can turn into an electron and oppositron, so it
can turn into matter and antimatter. Oh I see, so
(12:17):
like regular matter if it's energetic enough or under some
special condition, can certainly like poof out of existence antimatter. Yeah, exactly.
And if you have cosmic rays, for example, cosmic rays,
really high energy particles hit the atmosphere, they create all
these collisions and all these interactions, and some of those
create high energy particles like photons or z s or
(12:37):
something which can create antimatter. Um. And then of course
that stuff annihilates very quickly in the atmosphere, so you
don't like, doesn't fall to the Earth. You can't go
and pick up a piece of antimatter like a meteorite. So, um,
I know that. I think what a lot of you
do you see in science fiction? Is that antimatter? If
you touch it, you're going to explode. Like if an
antimatter version of me and me shake hands, we're going
(13:00):
to explode. Yes, not recommended. Do not shake hands with
an antimatter person. How about fizbump, fiz bump bump, No, no,
Put put that dude in a bubble, preferably a magnetic
bubble immediately. Um. You know that's an interesting question, like
could you have anti matter life? We don't know, But
your question is does matter and antimatter annihilate when they meet.
(13:21):
The answer is actually yes, that's one thing in science
fiction that's actually true. Matter and anti matter annihilates like if,
but it's only if the two versions of the one
thing come together, like an anti electron and an electron.
If they come together, dull annihilate exactly, but not if,
Like an elect anti electron and a regular court, they won't.
They won't annihilate. That's right. So what we talked about earlier,
(13:43):
Like a photon can turn into an electron oppositron, the
same thing can happen in the opposite direction. An electron
and oppositron can annihilate into a photon or into a
z boson. But you're right. Not every kind of particle
can annihilate with its antiparticle. There are some rules about
which particles and which antiparticles can annihilate into each other.
A particle and its own antiparticle can always annihilate, and
(14:06):
the reason is that they cancel each other out. So
an electron is charged minus one, a positron is charged
plus one, so they can make a photon which has
charged zero without violating conservation of electric charge. But an
electron can't annihilate with another electron, because that would be
charged minus two, and the photon can't have charge of
minus two. So there has to be um uh, kind
(14:26):
of like the mirror perfection in order for them to annihilate. Like,
you can't take an electron smash it with a proton,
which has the opposite charge. But there's sort of like
different things. They're not anti versions of each other, and
those like a proton and an electron one annihilate. That's right.
A proton will not annihilate with an electron. They'll interact
and they'll bang off each other, but they will not
(14:48):
annihilate into into like a neutral particle like a photon. Yeah,
so what's the difference between a positron and a proton?
What's the differ between a positron and a proton? Yeah,
that that makes it annihilate with the electron. We don't know.
It's um It's something we do in physics where we say, well,
we see this pattern. We don't understand why one thing
(15:08):
happens and something else happens, so we'll just invent a rule.
Will say well, let's create a number called electronness, and
we say the electron carries electronness, the anti electron carries
anti elect negative electronness. It will just say, let's theorize
if there's a rule that electronness has to be conserved,
and so that's why, for example, a negative electron can't
(15:31):
annihilate with a positive muan because a positive muan doesn't
carry the right amount of electron nous. And you might
think this sounds totally made up. It's totally made up,
and like a muon is heavier than an electron, therefore
it must have some something different. Yeah, even though therefore
there is a bit tenuous because this is like a
description of what we've seen. We've never seen an electron
(15:54):
and anti muan annihilate together into a photon. Why not?
We don't have a good reason why not. We just
invent a rule. But the rule is really just a
description of what we have seen so far. We say, well,
there must be this rule. We don't know why there
where why there's this rule, but it's describes what we've
seen so far. People are looking for that, right. So
(16:14):
we don't know why matter annihilates with antimatter. We just
know that it does. We understand how matter can annihilate
with antimatter. How the electron can annihilate with the positron.
We don't know why the electron is picky, Like why
doesn't it also annihilate with the muan or with the
tao or other stuff. There seemed to be these rules,
but there's plenty of these particles around. So if Jorge
(16:34):
meets Anti Jorge, your electrons will annihilate with his positrons.
I guess her. I don't know. Anti Jorge would look
like right, um, and your protons would annihilate with his
anti protons. So that wouldn't be a problem. So what
happens when we annihilate, like what creates the explosion? Yeah,
it's an enormous amount of energy. Everybody's heard the equation
(16:55):
E equals mc squared from from Einstein. Yeah, yeah, I
sense equation energy E is equal to mass times the
speed of light squared. Okay, so that that tells you
how much energy is stored inside mass. What happens when
a particle and antiparticle meat is they turn into photons
or energy. Right, And it's a huge amount of energy
(17:15):
because mass has an enormous amount of energy in it.
Because the speed of light, the C squared is a
big number. So, for example, let's give some people a scale.
If you took a raisin, which is like one gram
of matter, and push it up against an anti raisin, right,
that two grams of matter has enough energy to create
an explosion the size of a nuclear weapon. Yes, so
(17:38):
if so, to make a nuclear weapon, you just need
a raisin and an anti raisin and print it together,
and all of their electrons and protons and anti versions
would like convert into energy to make a nuclear weapon
sized bomb out of matter and anti matter. How do
we get here? We're like giving people prescriptions for how
to build weapons. All of a sudden on this show,
(17:59):
I think there's going to a flagged by the Department
of Home and Security. I think there's somebody knocking on
my door a second. Fortunately, there's not enough antimatter on
Earth to make that kind of device. I mean, I said,
it's certainly manufacture antimatter, but we manufacture pico grams of
(18:19):
anti matter a year for use in science experiments, so
not nearly enough to make anything practical. Well, that's the
big mystery about anti matter, right, Like it's it's we
know it's a mirror version of everything around us. A
regular matter like us, and so it's possible, like it's
it's it's equally likely to exist as us. But there's
(18:40):
none of it. There's not much of it in the universe,
Like we don't see it around. Yeah, there seems to
be nothing preventing it from being created. But as far
as we can tell, most of the universe is made
out of matter and not antimatter. And we we wonder
when we see these symmetries, we're like, well, it seems
like everything is the same between matter and anti matter.
Why does the universe then prefer matter and not antimatter?
(19:01):
Why are we not made out of anti matter? Now,
of course there's just a word game there. If we
were made out of anti matter, we would probably call
that matter. The questions really, why are we made out
of this kind and not the other kind of Like
why are we made of the kind of matter where
the electron has a negative charge as opposed to all
of us being made out of electrons with a positive charge. Yeah,
that's a it's a great question because as far as
(19:23):
we can tell, there are very small differences between the
way matter and antimatter work. So you know, you can
make atoms out of matter or atoms that of antimatter. Yeah,
and so we don't have an explanation for that. People
think that in the beginning of the universe there was
the same amount. That's one possibility, right, Like we started
the universe with equal amounts of both matter and antimatter. Yeah,
(19:46):
And that's the simplest explanation because we think that the
universe started in sort of a symmetric state. And either
the universe started an asymmetric state, like with more matter
than antimatter, and then you have to ask, well why, right,
that doesn't answer the question of why is there more
matter or than anto maatter? Now, either it started with
an as symmetry because like mathematically, according to the equations,
they're they're like the same. There's no reason why you
(20:08):
would prefer the plus the negative electron as opposed to
the positive electron. That's right. We found a few ways
that the universe prefers matter to antimatter, but they're really small. Um.
So if you start off saying the universe begins with
the same amount of matter and antimatter, then you have
to explain where did all the antimatter go? Right, Because
(20:28):
if there was the same amount, you imagine eventually they
would annihilate and the whole universe would just be photons. Right,
But there must have been more matter than antimatter, or
something that prefers matter to antimatter, like turns antimatter into
matter somehow to explain why we have matter left over
but no antimatter. So that that's one possibility. We started
(20:49):
out with the same amounts and somehow, uh, we are
only left with one kind of matter. That's right, and
we have found a few ways for that to happen.
It's called CP violation. For those who are interested. There
are a few processes we've discovered that prefer making matter
over antimatter, but there's too small. They don't explain the
huge asymmetry that we've seen, you know, explain like one
(21:10):
percent of it. So, but there is a preference in
the universe. You're saying, in the laws of physics, there
is a slight preference for matter and not antimatter. That's right. Yeah,
it connects to this question of charge conservation and parody
and charge parody conservation, and we should do a whole
other podcast on that, and whether particles prefer moving forward
or backward in time, and whether they prefer being matter
(21:30):
or antimatter. But those are very very small differences, so
we're looking for larger asymmetries. We haven't found any. People
are hunting. Is there a process which can turn antimatter
into matter or prefers matter. Nobody's found it so far.
We're still looking. It's a big mystery. It's a big mystery. Yeah.
(22:00):
Is it possible that the next galaxy over is maybe
made out of antimatter. It's a possibility that there is
antimatter hiding out there in the universe, right, So let's
think for a moment, how would you find antimatter? Right? Well,
I mean, if there's any antimatter on Earth, they would
very quickly annihilate with normal matter, and the thing you
would see is photons being created. Those photons, for example,
(22:20):
would have the same energy of the mass of the electron.
So what happens when an electron of positron annihilate is
you get to photons. Actually, one that has the mass
of the electron. The other has the mass of the positron,
which is the same and we know that number, so
we can look for that. So we can see matter
anti matter annihilation. Because we look for these photons of
a specific energy, and we don't see any on Earth,
(22:41):
and we look around in our solar system, we don't
see any here. And we look further and further. Any
kind of pockets of antimatter or even a small amount
of it that's hanging out near regular matter, it would
just like annihilate and we would see these explosion, right. Yeah,
And so imagine you have like a galaxy that's of
antimatter that's next to a galaxy of matter. Maybe they're
(23:04):
far enough a way that they're not going to collide
and annihilate in some super cataclysm, right, but they're going
to be shooting particles out. There's gonna be a boundary.
At the boundary between them. You would expect to see
a lot of matter antimatter collisions, and you would see
these photons of a special energy being created. And so
that's what people look for to see, is there like
a boundary to the edge of our matter bubble. You know,
(23:25):
maybe the rest of the universe is made out of
anti matter and we're just made out of matter. So
they look for the edge of this bubble to see
how far they can how far they can push the
proof of matter and and they look beyond the Solar System,
and the whole galaxy we're pretty sure is made out
of matter, and also our cluster of galaxies is made
out of matter. But beyond that, we're not sure, because
(23:47):
it's really hard to see that far and to see
these little blips of electron positron annihilation of matter antimatter interaction.
You can't just tell the difference by looking at it.
Like a star you seeing in the night sky today,
or a galaxy you see out in the night sky,
it could be an antimatter galaxy or an antimatter star,
but you wouldn't be able to tell just by looking
at it. That's right. If matter and antimatter work the
(24:08):
same way, then an anti matter star would look just
like a normal star, would have the same fusion process
and send out the same kinds of photons and look
exactly the same. Yeah, but at the core of it,
it would be like anti stuff burning inside of it. Yeah,
anti fusion. But the interesting thing is maybe your listeners
are thinking, well, what about the photon, right, um, people
might be wondering what they wouldn't anti sons make anti photons.
(24:33):
The crazy thing about the photon is it has no
electric charge and has no weak charge, so it is
its own anti particle. Oh, because it doesn't have these
charges that the other particles have, it doesn't have anything
to flip. That's right, there's nothing to flip. It's like
a perfect ball looks the same in the mirror, exactly.
It's like the connection between matter and antimatter. It's the bridge, right,
(24:56):
And so anti matter stars make photons just to same
way matter stars make photons, and so that's you can't
tell the difference. You're exactly right. So we think the
universe is probably made out of matter rather than anti matter.
It's just simpler because everything around us and in our
galaxy and in our galaxy cluster is made out of matter.
But we don't actually know. It could be the deep
(25:17):
out there, they're huge blobs of antom matter. But even still,
say that's the case, say the universes like pockets of
matter and pockets of vandom matter. Then you have to ask, well,
why why do we prefer matter here and anti matter?
They're right, there has to be some difference to explain
the fact that we are matter and not antimatter. And
that's a fascinating question. It's something it's like a huge
(25:37):
symmetry in the universe that we've discovered, except there's this
asymmetry to it. Right, it's like an almost symmetry. It's
a broken symmetry. And those are really interesting clues if
you want to understand something deep about the universe, about
it's very organization. It's like, why are most people right handed?
You could like, why isn't half the population right handed?
And you'll have left handed but you're right. Um, it's
(25:59):
a good analogy because as you could be right or
left handed, right, there's no reason to prefer one or
the other sort of anatomically, so why are most people
right handed? Yeah, it could have been some arbitrary moment
in the history, in the prehistory of humanity, where you know,
some gene preferred this or the other um and now
we're all living that way. And it could be the
same with matter and antimatter, that some moment in the
early universe it could have gone one way or the other,
(26:20):
and now we're living in a matter universe. A lot
of big events in the universe could come from random
quantum fluctuations in the early moments that just kind of
flipped it for everybody else, and we're all living with
that decision. So we talked a little bit about how
we study it. Like, so it's certain you take you
you Colli particles and hopefully sometimes out of that ball
(26:45):
of energy outcomes out some antimatter. And then what do
you do with it? You can't like hold it right
or how do you how do you store it? And
how do you like do things with it if it explodes,
if it touches regular matter. Yeah, so it's certainly do
two kinds of studies for the anti matter. One, we
just smash protons together to create exotic new particles, and
a lot of times those will turn into matter and
(27:05):
antimatter pairs, and then we just we see those like
you create a z boson and it turns into a
muan and anti muon. Totally normal, everyday kind of thing.
But there are people at certain who are also dedicated
to studying this question of antiparticles, and they make anti
matter and then they form it into atoms and then
they do trap it. The only way to trap antimatter
is to build a bottle that holds it without touching it.
(27:28):
And so you can do that with magnets. Ah, Like
you create a magnetic field that that traps all of
these antiparticles inside of the the magnetic field, that's right,
and they can like swooh around in a circle. And so, yeah,
you can control it without touching it, because antimatter also
feels magnetism. And so they've done experiments where they've created
(27:50):
like anti hydrogen, yeah, anti hydrogen, and they've poked it
and interacted with it, and they've you know, they've seen
doesn't interact the same way we we do. UM. And
so far it looks pretty normal. But you know, there's
still some really deep questions about antimatter, like does it
feel gravity the same way that we do or the opposite.
To study that, you need a lot of antimatter and
(28:11):
we can only make tiny, tiny amounts. Well, I think
this sort of relates to these deeper questions about the
mathematics of the universe. You know, we we have these
equations that say, oh, you should see antimatter versions of everything, um.
But then how those equations relate to the what we
actually see like the real world. That's a that's another
(28:33):
that's a bigger question, right, Yeah, it comes out of
these mathematical models. You're right, It's like in the in
the twenties, people are trying to build up math that
describe what we saw on quantum mechanics, and all that
stuff was pretty new, and a guy named Paul de
Rac was putting together a description of really fast moving
electrons and he noticed that his equation worked for fast
(28:53):
moving negatively charged electrons the kind we saw, but it
also worked for positively charged electrons. Thought that's interesting, Uh,
do those exist? And for a while he thought maybe
the proton was the anti electron, but then people show
that that couldn't be, so he said, well, then I'm
gonna postulate the existence of a new particle, the anti electron,
(29:14):
And just a few years later a guy at Caltech
found it, and then actually at direct direct won the
Nobel Prize, and at his Nobel Prize acceptance speech he
predicted the anti proton, which was then later found. So
he like doubled down at his Nobel Prize speech and
went for a second one, woh, well, so what do
you think is the larger lesson here about antimatter? I
think that the larger lesson is that there are patterns
(29:37):
in what's going on in the universe, and those patterns
are clues. Their clues that are going to tell us
how things work. You know, we don't know what the
whole clue though, Like we've discovered the particles have this
weird mirror twin. Are there other ways that particles are mirrored?
Are there other kinds of matter? Like maybe there's a
particle and an anti particle and a third kind we
haven't even imagined a secret yeah, or like neutral version
(30:00):
of every particle or something. Then you would hear the music,
that's right. I think the lesson is that we need
to look for these patterns, and these patterns tell us
something about the organization of the universe. I mean, my
personal scientific fantasy is to figure out, like what is
the deepest layer of matter? How is everything put together?
Because I feel like if we found out that the
(30:22):
universe was made out of strings or little beach balls
or tiny hamsters or something, it would tell us something
deep about the universe itself. Right, So accumulating these patterns
and noticing these symmetries, these things are clues that are
going to help us figure out what things are, how
things are arranged, Like maybe electrons and positrons are made
out of the same little sub pieces, just arranged differently. Right,
(30:44):
and so that it makes perfect sense where you have
two kinds. Maybe they're not mirror images of each other,
they're just like different ways that the lego pieces inside
are put together. Yeah, they're inside out or something, you know,
other analogy. We don't know. And the fact that every
particle seems to have an antiparticle as far as we
can hell, seems like a big clue that it's something
basic about matter itself. Well, in the meantime, the lesson
(31:06):
seems to be if you see an antimatter version of yourself,
run that's right. Also, most of the stuff you read
about antimatter in science fiction is real. So antimatter universes
could exist out there. There could be anti people and
anti podcasts and and and anti jokes and all that stuff.
It could be out there, and maybe one day we'll
meet aliens, but we won't be able to touch them
(31:27):
because they'll be antimatter. Oh man, that would be very
anti climatic. No, I totally walked into that and with dad.
Thank you so much, you guys for listening. So antimatter
is a deep mystery. We don't know why it's there,
We don't know what it means. We don't know. Does
it feel gravity the same we do? Does it feel
(31:48):
anti gravity? Um? We know that there are some clues
about the way the universe works and the reason it
prefers matter. They're hidden in these mysteries of antimatter, and
we have to just keep making it and studying it
before we can figure this stuff out. Well, thank you
for listening. We hope you guys enjoyed that. Yeah, thanks
very much. If you still have a question after listening
(32:13):
to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd
love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or
email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
There's a mysterious form of matter in the universe and
it has really strange properties. I've heard of this kind
of matter, and I heard that if it touches regular matter,
it explodes. Yes, and we can only make it in
super fancy particle colliders. Apparently we don't even know why
it exists. Who even asked for it? Who ordered that?
(00:29):
Who ordered that? I'll have what she's having, but the opposite,
I don't know if some people want to explode him.
(00:54):
And I'm Daniel and this is Daniel and Jrge explained
the universe where we tackle the higher universe and explain
it to you today on the program Antimatter. What is it?
Not Antifa, not antigua, but anti matter. That's right, These
are all good anti jokes. Actually typed in anti into
(01:17):
Google earlier to see what the completions were, and anti
matter was like the sixth one. Yeah, are curious about
antigua and antifa and uh and other sorts of anti stuff. Yeah,
So what is it? Um? What does it have against
regular matter? And more important, where is it? And what
(01:38):
can it do for you? Yeah? Besides blowing you up.
So apparently if you touch anti matter, you're going to
explode an a ball of light. That's right, Folks out
there listening to this, if you're sitting next to a
blob of anti matter, don't touch it, run label it
safely for other people, and then run away really fast.
(01:58):
We are very pro safety this podcast. We want to
explain the universe, not explode the universe or kill everybody
in the universe. All right, But before we begin talking
about anti matter, we went out in the street. We
asked people, what do you know about anti matter? What
is anti matter? Here's what they had to say. I
guess matters the matter, So no matter. It's like the
(02:21):
black hole. I mean, I've heard it in relational like space,
but I couldn't define it at all. It's like the
opposite It's like a proton has more mass in electron,
but it's the opposite charge. The electron has a positive charge,
but it's like the lighter at all. All right, So
most people seem to have heard of the term antimatter.
That that's that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's really cool that
(02:42):
people have heard of anti matter, though almost nobody seems
to know what it is. Everyone seems to have an
idea that it's like regular matter, but kind of like
the opposite, like it's it's like a weird kind of matter. Yeah,
And this is one of my favorite things about antimatter
is that it's a science concept that has penetrated into
(03:02):
popular culture and mostly kept the science intact. Like the
things people know about antimatter are mostly true, which is
not the case for a lot of other things in science,
you know, quantum mechanics and relativity and all this stuff.
People have distorted ideas from science fiction. Well, I think
one of the biggest instances of it that I've seen
in movies it it was on that movie The Da
(03:23):
Vinci Code, or the sequel to The Da Vinci Code,
Angels and Demons. Yeah, where they were there was somebody
trying to like harness antimatter and make a bomb out
of it. That's right. And you know that movie Angels
and Demons starts at the Atlas Detector at CERN, which
is where I were, which is pretty awesome. Did you
get a cameo? I I didn't get to meet Tom
(03:43):
Hanks and I didn't get to be in the movie.
But it's also always fun to see your workplace turned
into a science fiction movie because and in the version
of my workplace that they have at in the movie.
They have all these fancy displays and cool interfaces and
retinal scans, all this stuff, and everyone's wearing like white
lab coats, right and safety as they should. That's right.
(04:06):
You can't do science without white lab coat. Yeah, you
don't want to get any anti matter on your clothes
unless they're anti closing your antiverson. Science fiction is always
an inspiration for real life, so there's nothing wrong there. Um.
But there are some elements to Angels and Demons which
are correct. Okay, so Angels and Demons got correct that
we do make anti matter at certain though not enough
(04:28):
to make a bomb. We make anti matter at certain Yes,
we produce it, but not enough to make a bomb.
That's very important distinction. And if antimatter collides with matter,
it does annihilate and turn into energy, so you can
make explosives. Yes, that is all actually true. You can
make a bomb, but you're not making a bomb right now.
We have no plans to make bombs. Um. But but yes,
(04:49):
technically antimatter can be used to make engines or weapons. Okay,
well we'll get to how that all works, but let's
maybe talk about what is it. The simplest way to
describe antom matter is just that it's the opposite of matter, right,
every particle, most of matter is made of particles, right, Protons, neutrons, electrons,
this kind of stuff. And inside the protons and neutrons
(05:11):
we have corks. And the amazing thing is that each
of these particles has sort of a twin, except it's
the evil twin, the opposite twin, like a mirror twin. Yes,
like a mirror twin. It's not exactly the same sound,
identical twin. It's a mirror twin because it has a
lot of the properties of it are flipped. So the
electron is negatively charged. The antimatter version of the electron,
(05:32):
called the positron, it has a positive charge. And so
you're exactly right. The antimatter is like matter, but with
the opposite charge, and some other aspects of it are
also flipped. So it's not just the electrical charge that's
flipped like plus and minus like in a battery, or
like an electron and a proton. It's like they have
other things about them that are flipped. That's right, because
(05:54):
the electric charge is what tells you whether something feels electromagnetism,
which is one of the four forces. But there are
other charges, right, there are other forces and so other
charges exactly other forces, each of which have their own charge.
So for example, gravity has a charge we call that mass,
but you can't flip mass because you can't have negative mass.
Antimatter particles have positive mass, but the other forces, like
(06:17):
the weak force, it has a charge called the hypercharge,
and anti particles can have the opposite hypercharge as well.
So every particle seems to have this antiparticle, Like the
electron is the positron, and the corks have the anti corks,
and so antimatter are these particles that are exactly analogous
to the particles we know and love and are made
(06:37):
up out of, except there seemed to be the opposite.
So like if a cork, regular cork um feels all
of the forces, right, I think regular cork feels all
the forces. You have gravity, electromagnetism, weak force, and strong force.
And there's a version of the cork that is the
anti cork that has like, uh, the opposite charge, opposite hypercharge,
opposite color charge. And that's when a play matter is.
(07:00):
It's like versions of regular matter that have everything flipped
to them exactly. And the key thing is that we
associate them together. We say, like, well, here's the particle,
we call it the electron. Here's another particle we call
it the positron. And the connection between them is something
that we've made, right, We say, these two are related,
they're similar in some way, they're there's there's a pattern here,
(07:22):
And we look for these patterns all the time because
we're trying to explain the larger story, right, We're trying
to understand what is what we are seeing mean, and
so we're always looking for patterns. But what is the
thing they have in common? The is it like the
mass or you know, just the kind of the arrangement
of these charges. Why do we associate them together? Yeah,
great question. They have the same mass, and you're exactly right,
(07:44):
as far as we can tell, the electron of the
positron of exactly the same mass, and they also have
the same magnitude of the charge, Like the electron is
charge minus one positronic charge plus. The quarks have these
fractional charges two thirds one third and the anti quarks
has the opposite, you know, minus two thirds or plus
one third. So they really do come in pairs. Oh,
(08:05):
I see, So it's not just that the flip it's
like flipped exactly. Yeah, that's why it's a kind of special. Yeah,
it's it's like if you if you discovered one day
that you had a twin, right, and you didn't know
about it your whole life, that would be pretty interesting.
You'd wonder like, oh, why do I have a twin?
I would be like, there can only be one. Well,
you wouldn't go out necessarily and kill your twin immediately
(08:26):
because you're worried about your inheritance. I mean, I don't
know how the things work in your family, or just
convince them to try difer in line of work. Probably please,
we don't need another cartoonist. Um, what if you found
out that everybody in town had a twin, right, then
you would conclude, oh, there's something to this, there's something
twinny about my town, or my country or my species. Right.
(08:46):
And that's the amazing thing about anti matter is that
not just the electron has an antiparticle, but the quarks
and every particle we've discovered so far has an antiparticle.
So this's some deep symmetry of the universe. It's not
just like, hey, look at this pattern we found. It's
veeling of something. So everything that we know and see
and touch, um, there's a there can be a version
of it that's like the opposite. Yeah, exactly, there's an
(09:09):
opposite version, and not opposite in the way like you
know you had a gross breakfast this morning, there's an
opposite version where you had a delicious breakfast. You know,
it's opposite in the sense that it's made out of
the opposite particles. So right, first, we're talking about antiparticles,
and we can talk about anti matter, which is stuff
made out of antiparticles. So that's a cool idea that
you can have like an anti electron, like inform an
(09:30):
anti atom with an anti proton that's made out of
anti corks, right exactly, And then you can have an
anti Jorge making an anti podcast if we collide with
this podcast, which we anti entertaining. Unfortunately, no, that's terrible
anti educational. Yeah, Like, you could have an atom that's
(09:53):
made out of antiparticles and it would sort of like
look almost the same way as a regular atom, right,
it would would have that same kind of picture of
the protons and the neutrons, in the middle anti versions
of those with anti electrons flying around it and um
and you could have like elements, right, like you could
have anti oxygen and anti carbon, right. Is that the
(10:15):
that's the question. The question is does antimatter mirror matter exactly?
Mean it doesn't have all the same interactions and same
properties as far as we can tell. It does. As
far as we can tell, it does, But that's something
we're still working on because there isn't a lot of
antimatter around to study. So yes, we've seen anti anti electrons,
we've seen anti protons, and people have done experiments where
(10:36):
they've made anti hydrogen and created it and studied it,
and so far it looks exactly like hydrogen except for
it's made out of the antiparticles, like it has the
same energy levels and the same behavior. Beyond that, it
gets pretty tough because it's hard to make anti matter
and it's hard to keep it around because anti matter
will annihilate with normal matter. So we still have a
lot of open questions, like does it really exist in
(10:58):
the same way as matter? We know there has to
be some differences because the universe is made out of
matter and not antimatter. We don't know why we haven't
figured out what those differences are. But that's exactly the
course of a study, and so far it looks like
it matches everything that matter can do, antimatter can also do.
I have so many questions for you, but before we
dive in, let's take a short break. So there's a
(11:32):
lot of questions there. So first of all, like, how
do you make antimatter? How do you guys make antimatter
at Serain in Geneva. Yeah, well we take our lamp
and we rub it and the genie comes out and
we just ask it nicely for anti matter. I mean
this how you do science. That is how they do
science and Disneyland. Um, so antimatter is not that unusual.
(11:52):
It just doesn't live very long. Like antimatter is being
created all the time, Like thunderstorms create antimatter. Like what
do you mean lightning creates antimatter? Yeah, lightning can create antimatter.
Like how does it get created by lightning? Well, anytime
you have a very high energy photon, for example, a
photon can turn into an electron and oppositron, so it
can turn into matter and antimatter. Oh I see, so
(12:17):
like regular matter if it's energetic enough or under some
special condition, can certainly like poof out of existence antimatter. Yeah, exactly.
And if you have cosmic rays, for example, cosmic rays,
really high energy particles hit the atmosphere, they create all
these collisions and all these interactions, and some of those
create high energy particles like photons or z s or
(12:37):
something which can create antimatter. Um. And then of course
that stuff annihilates very quickly in the atmosphere, so you
don't like, doesn't fall to the Earth. You can't go
and pick up a piece of antimatter like a meteorite. So, um,
I know that. I think what a lot of you
do you see in science fiction? Is that antimatter? If
you touch it, you're going to explode. Like if an
antimatter version of me and me shake hands, we're going
(13:00):
to explode. Yes, not recommended. Do not shake hands with
an antimatter person. How about fizbump, fiz bump bump, No, no,
Put put that dude in a bubble, preferably a magnetic
bubble immediately. Um. You know that's an interesting question, like
could you have anti matter life? We don't know, But
your question is does matter and antimatter annihilate when they meet.
(13:21):
The answer is actually yes, that's one thing in science
fiction that's actually true. Matter and anti matter annihilates like if,
but it's only if the two versions of the one
thing come together, like an anti electron and an electron.
If they come together, dull annihilate exactly, but not if,
Like an elect anti electron and a regular court, they won't.
They won't annihilate. That's right. So what we talked about earlier,
(13:43):
Like a photon can turn into an electron oppositron, the
same thing can happen in the opposite direction. An electron
and oppositron can annihilate into a photon or into a
z boson. But you're right. Not every kind of particle
can annihilate with its antiparticle. There are some rules about
which particles and which antiparticles can annihilate into each other.
A particle and its own antiparticle can always annihilate, and
(14:06):
the reason is that they cancel each other out. So
an electron is charged minus one, a positron is charged
plus one, so they can make a photon which has
charged zero without violating conservation of electric charge. But an
electron can't annihilate with another electron, because that would be
charged minus two, and the photon can't have charge of
minus two. So there has to be um uh, kind
(14:26):
of like the mirror perfection in order for them to annihilate. Like,
you can't take an electron smash it with a proton,
which has the opposite charge. But there's sort of like
different things. They're not anti versions of each other, and
those like a proton and an electron one annihilate. That's right.
A proton will not annihilate with an electron. They'll interact
and they'll bang off each other, but they will not
(14:48):
annihilate into into like a neutral particle like a photon. Yeah,
so what's the difference between a positron and a proton?
What's the differ between a positron and a proton? Yeah,
that that makes it annihilate with the electron. We don't know.
It's um It's something we do in physics where we say, well,
we see this pattern. We don't understand why one thing
(15:08):
happens and something else happens, so we'll just invent a rule.
Will say well, let's create a number called electronness, and
we say the electron carries electronness, the anti electron carries
anti elect negative electronness. It will just say, let's theorize
if there's a rule that electronness has to be conserved,
and so that's why, for example, a negative electron can't
(15:31):
annihilate with a positive muan because a positive muan doesn't
carry the right amount of electron nous. And you might
think this sounds totally made up. It's totally made up,
and like a muon is heavier than an electron, therefore
it must have some something different. Yeah, even though therefore
there is a bit tenuous because this is like a
description of what we've seen. We've never seen an electron
(15:54):
and anti muan annihilate together into a photon. Why not?
We don't have a good reason why not. We just
invent a rule. But the rule is really just a
description of what we have seen so far. We say, well,
there must be this rule. We don't know why there
where why there's this rule, but it's describes what we've
seen so far. People are looking for that, right. So
(16:14):
we don't know why matter annihilates with antimatter. We just
know that it does. We understand how matter can annihilate
with antimatter. How the electron can annihilate with the positron.
We don't know why the electron is picky, Like why
doesn't it also annihilate with the muan or with the
tao or other stuff. There seemed to be these rules,
but there's plenty of these particles around. So if Jorge
(16:34):
meets Anti Jorge, your electrons will annihilate with his positrons.
I guess her. I don't know. Anti Jorge would look
like right, um, and your protons would annihilate with his
anti protons. So that wouldn't be a problem. So what
happens when we annihilate, like what creates the explosion? Yeah,
it's an enormous amount of energy. Everybody's heard the equation
(16:55):
E equals mc squared from from Einstein. Yeah, yeah, I
sense equation energy E is equal to mass times the
speed of light squared. Okay, so that that tells you
how much energy is stored inside mass. What happens when
a particle and antiparticle meat is they turn into photons
or energy. Right, And it's a huge amount of energy
(17:15):
because mass has an enormous amount of energy in it.
Because the speed of light, the C squared is a
big number. So, for example, let's give some people a scale.
If you took a raisin, which is like one gram
of matter, and push it up against an anti raisin, right,
that two grams of matter has enough energy to create
an explosion the size of a nuclear weapon. Yes, so
(17:38):
if so, to make a nuclear weapon, you just need
a raisin and an anti raisin and print it together,
and all of their electrons and protons and anti versions
would like convert into energy to make a nuclear weapon
sized bomb out of matter and anti matter. How do
we get here? We're like giving people prescriptions for how
to build weapons. All of a sudden on this show,
(17:59):
I think there's going to a flagged by the Department
of Home and Security. I think there's somebody knocking on
my door a second. Fortunately, there's not enough antimatter on
Earth to make that kind of device. I mean, I said,
it's certainly manufacture antimatter, but we manufacture pico grams of
(18:19):
anti matter a year for use in science experiments, so
not nearly enough to make anything practical. Well, that's the
big mystery about anti matter, right, Like it's it's we
know it's a mirror version of everything around us. A
regular matter like us, and so it's possible, like it's
it's it's equally likely to exist as us. But there's
(18:40):
none of it. There's not much of it in the universe,
Like we don't see it around. Yeah, there seems to
be nothing preventing it from being created. But as far
as we can tell, most of the universe is made
out of matter and not antimatter. And we we wonder
when we see these symmetries, we're like, well, it seems
like everything is the same between matter and anti matter.
Why does the universe then prefer matter and not antimatter?
(19:01):
Why are we not made out of anti matter? Now,
of course there's just a word game there. If we
were made out of anti matter, we would probably call
that matter. The questions really, why are we made out
of this kind and not the other kind of Like
why are we made of the kind of matter where
the electron has a negative charge as opposed to all
of us being made out of electrons with a positive charge. Yeah,
that's a it's a great question because as far as
(19:23):
we can tell, there are very small differences between the
way matter and antimatter work. So you know, you can
make atoms out of matter or atoms that of antimatter. Yeah,
and so we don't have an explanation for that. People
think that in the beginning of the universe there was
the same amount. That's one possibility, right, Like we started
the universe with equal amounts of both matter and antimatter. Yeah,
(19:46):
And that's the simplest explanation because we think that the
universe started in sort of a symmetric state. And either
the universe started an asymmetric state, like with more matter
than antimatter, and then you have to ask, well why, right,
that doesn't answer the question of why is there more
matter or than anto maatter? Now, either it started with
an as symmetry because like mathematically, according to the equations,
they're they're like the same. There's no reason why you
(20:08):
would prefer the plus the negative electron as opposed to
the positive electron. That's right. We found a few ways
that the universe prefers matter to antimatter, but they're really small. Um.
So if you start off saying the universe begins with
the same amount of matter and antimatter, then you have
to explain where did all the antimatter go? Right, Because
(20:28):
if there was the same amount, you imagine eventually they
would annihilate and the whole universe would just be photons. Right,
But there must have been more matter than antimatter, or
something that prefers matter to antimatter, like turns antimatter into
matter somehow to explain why we have matter left over
but no antimatter. So that that's one possibility. We started
(20:49):
out with the same amounts and somehow, uh, we are
only left with one kind of matter. That's right, and
we have found a few ways for that to happen.
It's called CP violation. For those who are interested. There
are a few processes we've discovered that prefer making matter
over antimatter, but there's too small. They don't explain the
huge asymmetry that we've seen, you know, explain like one
(21:10):
percent of it. So, but there is a preference in
the universe. You're saying, in the laws of physics, there
is a slight preference for matter and not antimatter. That's right. Yeah,
it connects to this question of charge conservation and parody
and charge parody conservation, and we should do a whole
other podcast on that, and whether particles prefer moving forward
or backward in time, and whether they prefer being matter
(21:30):
or antimatter. But those are very very small differences, so
we're looking for larger asymmetries. We haven't found any. People
are hunting. Is there a process which can turn antimatter
into matter or prefers matter. Nobody's found it so far.
We're still looking. It's a big mystery. It's a big mystery. Yeah.
(22:00):
Is it possible that the next galaxy over is maybe
made out of antimatter. It's a possibility that there is
antimatter hiding out there in the universe, right, So let's
think for a moment, how would you find antimatter? Right? Well,
I mean, if there's any antimatter on Earth, they would
very quickly annihilate with normal matter, and the thing you
would see is photons being created. Those photons, for example,
(22:20):
would have the same energy of the mass of the electron.
So what happens when an electron of positron annihilate is
you get to photons. Actually, one that has the mass
of the electron. The other has the mass of the positron,
which is the same and we know that number, so
we can look for that. So we can see matter
anti matter annihilation. Because we look for these photons of
a specific energy, and we don't see any on Earth,
(22:41):
and we look around in our solar system, we don't
see any here. And we look further and further. Any
kind of pockets of antimatter or even a small amount
of it that's hanging out near regular matter, it would
just like annihilate and we would see these explosion, right. Yeah,
And so imagine you have like a galaxy that's of
antimatter that's next to a galaxy of matter. Maybe they're
(23:04):
far enough a way that they're not going to collide
and annihilate in some super cataclysm, right, but they're going
to be shooting particles out. There's gonna be a boundary.
At the boundary between them. You would expect to see
a lot of matter antimatter collisions, and you would see
these photons of a special energy being created. And so
that's what people look for to see, is there like
a boundary to the edge of our matter bubble. You know,
(23:25):
maybe the rest of the universe is made out of
anti matter and we're just made out of matter. So
they look for the edge of this bubble to see
how far they can how far they can push the
proof of matter and and they look beyond the Solar System,
and the whole galaxy we're pretty sure is made out
of matter, and also our cluster of galaxies is made
out of matter. But beyond that, we're not sure, because
(23:47):
it's really hard to see that far and to see
these little blips of electron positron annihilation of matter antimatter interaction.
You can't just tell the difference by looking at it.
Like a star you seeing in the night sky today,
or a galaxy you see out in the night sky,
it could be an antimatter galaxy or an antimatter star,
but you wouldn't be able to tell just by looking
at it. That's right. If matter and antimatter work the
(24:08):
same way, then an anti matter star would look just
like a normal star, would have the same fusion process
and send out the same kinds of photons and look
exactly the same. Yeah, but at the core of it,
it would be like anti stuff burning inside of it. Yeah,
anti fusion. But the interesting thing is maybe your listeners
are thinking, well, what about the photon, right, um, people
might be wondering what they wouldn't anti sons make anti photons.
(24:33):
The crazy thing about the photon is it has no
electric charge and has no weak charge, so it is
its own anti particle. Oh, because it doesn't have these
charges that the other particles have, it doesn't have anything
to flip. That's right, there's nothing to flip. It's like
a perfect ball looks the same in the mirror, exactly.
It's like the connection between matter and antimatter. It's the bridge, right,
(24:56):
And so anti matter stars make photons just to same
way matter stars make photons, and so that's you can't
tell the difference. You're exactly right. So we think the
universe is probably made out of matter rather than anti matter.
It's just simpler because everything around us and in our
galaxy and in our galaxy cluster is made out of matter.
But we don't actually know. It could be the deep
(25:17):
out there, they're huge blobs of antom matter. But even still,
say that's the case, say the universes like pockets of
matter and pockets of vandom matter. Then you have to ask, well,
why why do we prefer matter here and anti matter?
They're right, there has to be some difference to explain
the fact that we are matter and not antimatter. And
that's a fascinating question. It's something it's like a huge
(25:37):
symmetry in the universe that we've discovered, except there's this
asymmetry to it. Right, it's like an almost symmetry. It's
a broken symmetry. And those are really interesting clues if
you want to understand something deep about the universe, about
it's very organization. It's like, why are most people right handed?
You could like, why isn't half the population right handed?
And you'll have left handed but you're right. Um, it's
(25:59):
a good analogy because as you could be right or
left handed, right, there's no reason to prefer one or
the other sort of anatomically, so why are most people
right handed? Yeah, it could have been some arbitrary moment
in the history, in the prehistory of humanity, where you know,
some gene preferred this or the other um and now
we're all living that way. And it could be the
same with matter and antimatter, that some moment in the
early universe it could have gone one way or the other,
(26:20):
and now we're living in a matter universe. A lot
of big events in the universe could come from random
quantum fluctuations in the early moments that just kind of
flipped it for everybody else, and we're all living with
that decision. So we talked a little bit about how
we study it. Like, so it's certain you take you
you Colli particles and hopefully sometimes out of that ball
(26:45):
of energy outcomes out some antimatter. And then what do
you do with it? You can't like hold it right
or how do you how do you store it? And
how do you like do things with it if it explodes,
if it touches regular matter. Yeah, so it's certainly do
two kinds of studies for the anti matter. One, we
just smash protons together to create exotic new particles, and
a lot of times those will turn into matter and
(27:05):
antimatter pairs, and then we just we see those like
you create a z boson and it turns into a
muan and anti muon. Totally normal, everyday kind of thing.
But there are people at certain who are also dedicated
to studying this question of antiparticles, and they make anti
matter and then they form it into atoms and then
they do trap it. The only way to trap antimatter
is to build a bottle that holds it without touching it.
(27:28):
And so you can do that with magnets. Ah, Like
you create a magnetic field that that traps all of
these antiparticles inside of the the magnetic field, that's right,
and they can like swooh around in a circle. And so, yeah,
you can control it without touching it, because antimatter also
feels magnetism. And so they've done experiments where they've created
(27:50):
like anti hydrogen, yeah, anti hydrogen, and they've poked it
and interacted with it, and they've you know, they've seen
doesn't interact the same way we we do. UM. And
so far it looks pretty normal. But you know, there's
still some really deep questions about antimatter, like does it
feel gravity the same way that we do or the opposite.
To study that, you need a lot of antimatter and
(28:11):
we can only make tiny, tiny amounts. Well, I think
this sort of relates to these deeper questions about the
mathematics of the universe. You know, we we have these
equations that say, oh, you should see antimatter versions of everything, um.
But then how those equations relate to the what we
actually see like the real world. That's a that's another
(28:33):
that's a bigger question, right, Yeah, it comes out of
these mathematical models. You're right, It's like in the in
the twenties, people are trying to build up math that
describe what we saw on quantum mechanics, and all that
stuff was pretty new, and a guy named Paul de
Rac was putting together a description of really fast moving
electrons and he noticed that his equation worked for fast
(28:53):
moving negatively charged electrons the kind we saw, but it
also worked for positively charged electrons. Thought that's interesting, Uh,
do those exist? And for a while he thought maybe
the proton was the anti electron, but then people show
that that couldn't be, so he said, well, then I'm
gonna postulate the existence of a new particle, the anti electron,
(29:14):
And just a few years later a guy at Caltech
found it, and then actually at direct direct won the
Nobel Prize, and at his Nobel Prize acceptance speech he
predicted the anti proton, which was then later found. So
he like doubled down at his Nobel Prize speech and
went for a second one, woh, well, so what do
you think is the larger lesson here about antimatter? I
think that the larger lesson is that there are patterns
(29:37):
in what's going on in the universe, and those patterns
are clues. Their clues that are going to tell us
how things work. You know, we don't know what the
whole clue though, Like we've discovered the particles have this
weird mirror twin. Are there other ways that particles are mirrored?
Are there other kinds of matter? Like maybe there's a
particle and an anti particle and a third kind we
haven't even imagined a secret yeah, or like neutral version
(30:00):
of every particle or something. Then you would hear the music,
that's right. I think the lesson is that we need
to look for these patterns, and these patterns tell us
something about the organization of the universe. I mean, my
personal scientific fantasy is to figure out, like what is
the deepest layer of matter? How is everything put together?
Because I feel like if we found out that the
(30:22):
universe was made out of strings or little beach balls
or tiny hamsters or something, it would tell us something
deep about the universe itself. Right, So accumulating these patterns
and noticing these symmetries, these things are clues that are
going to help us figure out what things are, how
things are arranged, Like maybe electrons and positrons are made
out of the same little sub pieces, just arranged differently. Right,
(30:44):
and so that it makes perfect sense where you have
two kinds. Maybe they're not mirror images of each other,
they're just like different ways that the lego pieces inside
are put together. Yeah, they're inside out or something, you know,
other analogy. We don't know. And the fact that every
particle seems to have an antiparticle as far as we
can hell, seems like a big clue that it's something
basic about matter itself. Well, in the meantime, the lesson
(31:06):
seems to be if you see an antimatter version of yourself,
run that's right. Also, most of the stuff you read
about antimatter in science fiction is real. So antimatter universes
could exist out there. There could be anti people and
anti podcasts and and and anti jokes and all that stuff.
It could be out there, and maybe one day we'll
meet aliens, but we won't be able to touch them
(31:27):
because they'll be antimatter. Oh man, that would be very
anti climatic. No, I totally walked into that and with dad.
Thank you so much, you guys for listening. So antimatter
is a deep mystery. We don't know why it's there,
We don't know what it means. We don't know. Does
it feel gravity the same we do? Does it feel
(31:48):
anti gravity? Um? We know that there are some clues
about the way the universe works and the reason it
prefers matter. They're hidden in these mysteries of antimatter, and
we have to just keep making it and studying it
before we can figure this stuff out. Well, thank you
for listening. We hope you guys enjoyed that. Yeah, thanks
very much. If you still have a question after listening
(32:13):
to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd
love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or
email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
Hosts And Creators
Daniel Whiteson
Kelly Weinersmith
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