Slow down! "Antimatter?" "Pure energy?" What is this, Star Trek?

The idea of antimatter is strange, made all the stranger because the universe appears to be composed entirely of matter. Antimatter seems to go against everything you know about the universe.

Image courtesy of Fermilab But you can see evidence for antimatter in this early bubble chamber photo. The magnetic field in this chamber makes negative particles curl left and positive particles curl right. Many electron-positron pairs appear as if from nowhere, but are in fact from photons, which don't leave a trail. Positrons (anti-electrons) behave just like the electrons but curl in the opposite way because they have the opposite charge. (One such electron-positron pair is highlighted.) If antimatter and matter are exactly equal but opposite, then why is there so much more matter in the universe than antimatter? Well... we don't know. It is a question that keeps physicists up at night. (The usual symbol for an antiparticle is a bar over the corresponding particle symbol. For example, the "up quark" u has an "up antiquark" designated by , pronounced u-bar. The antiparticle of a quark is an antiquark, the antiparticle of a proton is an antiproton, and so on. The antielectron is called a positron and is designatede+.) Extra dimention String theory and other new proposals require more than three space dimensions. These extra dimensions could be very small, which is why we don't see them. How can there be extra, smaller dimensions? Think about an acrobat and a flea on a tight rope. The acrobat can move forward and backward along the rope. But the flea can move forward and backward as well as side to side. If the flea keeps walking to one side, it goes around the rope and winds up where it started. So the acrobat has one dimension, and the flea has two dimensions, but one of these dimensions is a small closed loop. see the world in three dimensions, even though it might well have many more. This is impossible to visualize, precisely because we can only visualize things in three dimensions!

Black holes: What are they? Black holes are the evolutionary endpoints of stars at least 10 to 15 times as massive as the Sun. If a star that massive or larger undergoes a supernovaexplosion, it may leave behind a fairly massive burned-out stellar remnant. With no outward forces to oppose gravitational forces, the remnant will collapse in on itself. The star eventually collapses to the point of zero volume and infinitedensity, creating what is known as a "singularity." Around the singularity is a region where the force of gravity is so strong that not even light can escape. Thus, no information can reach us from this region. It is therefore called a black hole, and its surface is called the "event horizon." But contrary to popular myth, a black hole is not a cosmic vacuum cleaner. If our Sun was suddenly replaced with a black hole of the same mass, Earth's orbit around the Sun would be unchanged. Of course, Earth's temperature would change, and there would be no solar wind or solar magnetic storms affecting us. To be "sucked" into a black hole, one has to cross inside the Schwarzschild radius. At this radius, the escape speed is equal to the speed of light, and once light passes through, even it cannot escape. The Schwarzschild radius can be calculated using the equation for escape speed: vesc = (2GM/R)1/2 For photons, or objects with no mass, we can substitute c (the speed of light) for Vesc and find the Schwarzschild radius, R, to be R = 2GM/c2

If the Sun was replaced with a black hole that had the same mass as the Sun, the Schwarzschild radius would be 3 km (compared to the Sun's radius of nearly 700,000 km). Hence the Earth would have to get very close to get sucked into a black hole at the center of our Solar System. If we can't see them, how do we know they are there? Since stellar black holes are small (only a few to a few tens of kilometers in diameter), and light that would allow us to see them cannot escape, a black hole floating alone in space would be hard, if not impossible, to see in the visual spectrum. However, if a black hole passes through a cloud of interstellar matter, or is close to another "normal" star, the black hole can accrete matter into itself. As the matter falls or is pulled towards the black hole, it gains kinetic energy, heats up and is squeezed by tidal forces. The heating ionizes the atoms, and when the atoms reach a few million Kelvin, they emit X-rays. The X-rays are sent off into space before the matter crosses the Schwarzschild radius and crashes into thesingularity. Thus we can see this X-ray emission.

The optical companion of the black hole candidate Cygnus X-1

Binary X-ray sources are also places to find strong black hole candidates. A companion star is a perfect source of infalling material for a black hole. A binary system also allows the calculation of the black hole candidate's mass. Once the mass is found, it can be determined if the candidate is a neutron star or a black hole, since neutron stars always have masses of about 1.5 times the mass of the Sun. Another sign of the presence of a black hole is its random variation of emitted X-rays. The infalling matter that emits

X-rays does not fall into the black hole at a steady rate, but rather more sporadically, which causes an observable variation in X-ray intensity. Additionally, if the X-ray source is in a binary system, and we see it from certain angles, the X-rays will be periodically cut off as the source is eclipsed by the companion star. When looking for black hole candidates, all these things are taken into account. Many X-ray satellites have scanned the skies for X-ray sources that might be black hole candidates. Cygnus X-1 (Cyg X-1) is the longest known of the black hole candidates. It is a highly variable and irregular source, with X-ray emission that flickers in hundredths of a second. An object cannot flicker faster than the time required for light to travel across the object. In a hundredth of a second, light travels 3,000 kilometers. This is one fourth of Earth's diameter. So the region emitting the X-rays around Cyg X-1 is rather small. Its companion star, HDE 226868 is a B0 supergiant with a surface temperature of about 31,000 K. Spectroscopicobservations show that the spectral lines of HDE 226868 oscillate with a period of 5.6 days. From the mass-luminosity relation, the mass of this supergiant is calculated as 30 times the mass of the Sun. Cyg X1 must have a mass of about 7 solar masses, or it would not exert enough gravitational pull to cause the wobble in the spectral lines of HDE 226868. Other estimate put the mass of Cyg X-1 to as much as 16 solar masses. Since 7 solar masses is too large to be awhite dwarf or neutron star, it must be a black hole.

An illustration of Cygnus X-1, showing the companion star HDE 226868, the black hole, material streaming from the companion to the black hole, and the emission of X-rays near the black hole.

There are now about 20 X-ray binaries (as of early 2009) with known black holes (from measurements of the black hole mass). The first of these, an Xray transient called A0620-00, was discovered in 1975, and the mass of the compact object was determined in the mid-1980's to be greater than 3.5 solar masses. This very clearly excludes a neutron star, which has a mass near 1.5 solar masses, even allowing for all known theoretical uncertainties. The best case for a black hole is probably V404 Cygni, whose compact star is at least 10 solar masses. There are an additional 20 X-ray binaries which are likely to contain black holes - their behavior is the same as the confirmed black holes, but mass measurements have not been possible. Last Modified: December 2010Almost all matter observable from the Earth seems to be made of
matter rather than antimatter. If antimatter-dominated regions of space existed, the gamma rays produced in [8] annihilation reactions along the boundary between matter and antimatter regions would be detectable. Antiparticles are created everywhere in the universe where high-energy particle collisions take place. Highenergy cosmic rays impactingEarth's atmosphere (or any other matter in the Solar System) produce minute quantities of antiparticles in the resulting particle jets, which are immediately annihilated by contact with nearby matter. They may similarly be produced in regions like the center of the Milky Way and other galaxies, where very energetic celestial events occur (principally the interaction of relativistic jets with the interstellar medium). The presence of the resulting antimatter is detectable by the two gamma rays produced every time positrons annihilate with nearby matter. Thefrequency and wavelength of the gamma rays indicate that each carries 511 keV of energy (i.e., the rest 2 mass of an electron multiplied byc ). Recent observations by the European Space Agency's INTEGRAL satellite may explain the origin of a giant cloud of antimatter surrounding the galactic center. The observations show that the cloud is asymmetrical and matches the pattern of X-ray binaries (binary star systems containing black holes or neutron stars), mostly on one side of the galactic center. While the mechanism is not fully understood, it is likely to involve the production of electronpositron [9][10] pairs, as ordinary matter gains tremendous energy while falling into a stellar remnant. Antimatter may exist in relatively large amounts in far-away galaxies due to cosmic inflation in the primordial time of the universe. Antimatter galaxies, if they exist, are expected to have the same chemistry and absorption and emission spectra as normal-matter galaxies, and theirastronomical objects would be observationally identical, making them [11] difficult to distinguish. NASA is trying to determine if such galaxies exist by looking for X-ray and gamma-ray [12] signatures of annihilation events in colliding superclusters.

Natural production
Positrons are produced naturally in decays of naturally occurring radioactive isotopes (for example, potassium-40) and in interactions of gamma quanta (emitted by radioactive nuclei) with matter. Antineutrinos are another kind of antiparticles created by natural radioactivity ( decay). Many different kinds of antiparticles are also produced by (and contained in) cosmic rays. Recent (as of January 2011) research by the American Astronomical Society has discovered antimatter (positrons) originating above thunderstorm clouds; positrons are produced in gamma-ray [13] flashes created by electrons which are accelerated by strong electric fields in the clouds. Antiprotons have also [14][15] been found to exist in the Van Allen Belts around the Earth by the PAMELA module.
+

Artificial production
Antiparticles are also produced in any environment with a sufficiently high temperature (mean particle energy greater than the pair productionthreshold). During the period of baryogenesis, when the universe was extremely hot and dense, matter and antimatter were continually produced and annihilated. The presence of remaining matter, and [16] absence of detectable remaining antimatter, also called baryon asymmetry, is attributed to violation of the CPsymmetry relating matter to antimatter. The exact mechanism of this violation during baryogenesis remains a mystery. Positrons can also be produced by radioactive + decay, but this mechanism can occur both naturally and artificially.

Positrons
Main article: Positron Positrons were reported in November 2008 to have been generated by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in larger numbers than by any previous synthetic process. A laser drove electrons through a millimeterradius gold target's nuclei, which caused the incoming electrons to emit energy quanta that decayed into both matter and antimatter. Positrons were detected at a higher rate and in greater density than ever previously detected in a laboratory. Previous experiments made smaller quantities of positrons using lasers and paper-thin targets; however, [18] new simulations showed that short, ultra-intense lasers and millimeter-thick gold are a far more effective source.
[17]

Antiprotons, antineutrons, and antinuclei

Main articles: Antiproton and Antineutron The existence of the antiproton was experimentally confirmed in 1955 by University of California, Berkeley physicists Emilio Segr and Owen Chamberlain, for which they were awarded the 1959 Nobel Prize in [19] Physics. An antiproton consists of two up antiquarks and one down antiquark (uud). The properties of the antiproton that have been measured all match the corresponding properties of the proton, with the exception of the antiproton having opposite electric charge and magnetic moment from the proton. Shortly afterwards, in 1956, the antineutron was discovered in protonproton collisions at the Bevatron (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) [20] by Bruce Cork and colleagues. In addition to antibaryons, anti-nuclei consisting of multiple bound antiprotons and antineutrons have been created. These are typically produced at energies far too high to form antimatter atoms (with bound positrons in place of electrons). In 1965, a group of researchers led byAntonino Zichichi reported production of nuclei of antideuterium at [21] the Proton Synchrotron at CERN. At roughly the same time, observations of antideuterium nuclei were reported by [22] a group of American physicists at the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Antihydrogen atoms