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What is antimatter? Can antimatter form elements? That elements would be the same of the Periodic Table? These elements could form life? An universe could be based on antimatter particles?

What is antimatter?

Antimatter is the name for particles which have the same mass and spin as their corresponding "normal" particles, but all of their other physical properties are opposite. Particles have been found to have many measurable characteristics in addition to mass and charge. See http://physics.about.com/cs/particlephysics/g/antimatter.htm .

I found a very understandable discussion of antimatter on the Web page http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/2002dltr0027.html
which attempts to make it understandable to lawyers.

For a more graphical presentation, see http://livefromcern.web.cern.ch/livefromcern/antimatter/index.html


When a normal matter particle comes into contact with the corresponding antimatter particle, both particles convert into the equivalent amount of energy. Depending on the amount of energy released, it then may "condense" into other types of matter and anti-matter particles. A great deal of money is being spent on particle accelerators and associated "high energy particle physics" experiments to study these kinds of reactions.

Web sites of some of the particle accelerator laboratories are at http://www.slac.stanford.edu/ , http://www-acc.kek.jp/, http://www.cern.ch/, http://www.desy.de/, and http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/.

Can antimatter form elements?

Yes, although assembling antimatter atoms is very difficult in our local environment, which consists primarily of normal matter. See http://livefromcern.web.cern.ch/livefromcern/antimatter/factory/AM-factory00.html

That elements would be the same of the Periodic Table? These elements could form life? An universe could be based on antimatter particles?

In principle, yes. Please read the CERN pages above for more information about this.

It's a wee bit off topic, but I thought I'd mention this here.

The fiction list on the CERN site misses out a rather good AM source (I'm amused that it actually has a separate Star Trek section ) - the 2001 Nights comic series (actually, it's Japanese Manga, but it's translated into English):

2001 Nights (vol 1).

2001 Nights: Journey Beyond Tomorrow (vol 2)

2001 Nights: Children of Earth (vol 3)

(if you click on the "look inside" links there, you can read some of the books too).

It's a beautifully drawn, brilliantly written series of sci-fi stories cataloguing man's voyage into space in the future looking for other intelligent life. It's very visionary and optimistic (and original) too, and I suspect a lot of people here would like it.

The AM connection is that a huge antimatter planet is discovered at the edge of our solar system, with the potential to power humanity for millenia to come - if it can be harnessed properly. (the story also sets up a very powerfully written clash between religion and science, via Dante's Inferno ).

Definitely worth a look.