The most expensive thing in the world
Dangerous and destructive coexist . Just a little bit can destroy the world, and the propeller made with it can complete a qualitative leap.
Annihilation and the Big Bang , this is what antimatter looks like in the minds of most people. In other words, in the early days, antimatter was once a god due to various disseminations.
Antimatter does contain a lot of energy, but it is not as exaggerated as we think. In contrast, the price of
is truly surprising.
Currently, the price of one gram of antimatter is approximately 62.5 trillion , which is by far the most expensive substance on earth.
The reason why antimatter is so expensive is that it is almost impossible to "capture" it in nature. Unlike other artificially manufactured substances, the capture of antimatter purposeandscience greatly increases its production cost.
then. What is antimatter?
Toroidal instrument, used to observe high mass energy particles
In modern physics , antimatter is defined as matter composed of antiparticles of corresponding particles in "ordinary" matter.
For example, particle accelerators produce trace amounts of antiparticles every day, and the total artificial output of is only a few nanograms of .
In addition, in the universe, antimatter is also produced during natural processes such as cosmic ray collisions and certain types of radioactive decay.
Therefore, from this perspective, antimatter is not a concept limited to matter itself.
Only a small part of the many antiparticles can be successfully bound to form antiatoms in experiments. Due to the extremely high production cost and processing difficulty of , humans have never achieved the macroscopic number of so far. of antimatter.
Positrons observed in the Wilson Cloud Chamber
Now we all know that the elementary particles that constitute matter are protons, electrons and neutrons . This was also proposed by the British physicist Paul Dirac in 1930. Similar to the description of electrons, he predicted that antiparticles of electrons should exist.
At that time he wrote an equation that combined quantum theory and special theory of relativity to describe the behavior of electrons moving at relativistic speeds.
This equation later won him the Nobel Prize in 1933 . The Dirac equation explains that for every particle there is a corresponding antiparticle, which exactly matches the particle, but has an opposite charge.
British physicist Paul Dirac
Later it was discovered that other basic atoms particles also have antimatter counterparts , namely antiprotons and antineutrons .
Annihilation occurs when a particle and its antimatter counterpart meet.
This means that the two particles will disappear and their masses will change according to Einstein 's famous mass-energy equivalence equation.
This means that even a small amount of mass can be converted into a large amount of energy, scientists have calculated and analyzed. The energy produced by
antimatter during the annihilation process is 100000000000 times more powerful than chemical explosions such as trinitrotoluene , and is 10,000 times more powerful than a nuclear bomb explosion.
This may be the deepest impression that antimatter has left on people's minds. Of course, antimatter has far more than these effects.
It is not a problem for antimatter bombs to destroy the earth
Scientific research has proved , The observable universe is almost entirely composed of ordinary matter, rather than an equal mixture of matter and antimatter.
Likewise, most matter observed from Earth appears to be composed of matter rather than antimatter.
If a space region dominated by antimatter can exist, then the gamma rays caused by the annihilation reaction along the boundary between the matter and antimatter regions should be able to be monitored.
As we said before, when high-energy particles collide with in the universe, they will produce antiparticles wherever they are.
High-energy cosmic rays that strike the Earth's atmosphere or any other material in the solar system produce jets of particles that also produce trace amounts of antiparticles.
8 parts of the toroidal instrument
However, these antiparticles exist for a very short time , and the antiparticles will come into contact with nearby matter and thus be immediately annihilated .
For astronomers, antiparticle activities can be reflected in the high-energy celestial bodies existing in the universe, mainly in two aspects: relativistic jets and interstellar medium .
The European Space Agency uses gamma ray astrophysics experimental satellite to observe the Milky Way center, which can explain the origin of the huge antimatter cloud surrounding the center of the Milky Way.
And the observations showed that the clouds were asymmetric and the patterns of X-ray binaries matched each other.
When it is located mainly on one side of the center of the Milky Way, the antimatter cloud gains kinetic energy left behind by the stellar debris.
The nebula displayed by the Hubble Telescope
It is not impossible to create antimatter in an artificial environment. In order to create real antimatter, scientists focus on the simplest form of matter hydrogen .
The composition of the hydrogen atom is very simple, consisting of only one electron and one proton, which means that its antimatter will be equally simple.
Antihydrogen consists of antiprotons and positrons. The positrons are attracted to the antiprotons.
The world's first antihydrogen was created at CERN in 1995. Scientists used the super collider to create it through the collision of antiprotons and xenon atoms.
Alpha Labs' device for capturing antihydrogen
This collision produces a positron, which is electrically attracted to another antiproton, instantly forming antihydrogen.
But it is a pity that antimatter particles exist for a very short time. the annihilation process is very fast, and then releases energy, will disappear in a few millionths of a second .
Because of this, scientists have been looking for a way to stabilize antimatter particles.
The key to retaining antiparticles is to slow down the speed of antiparticles to prevent them from colliding. Theoretically, the antimatter can be put in a bottle that is half a degree higher than absolute zero, thus achieving antimatter preservation .
Machine for producing low-energy antiprotons
As of 2011, scientists retained antihydrogen for 15 minutes through this method.
It is worth mentioning that antimatter is not as mysterious as we think, it also exists in our lives.
Although there is no stable antimatter in nature, there are some sources of antimatter. For example, the bananas we usually eat will also release antimatter.
A banana releases a positron approximately every 75 minutes, which is equivalent to one electron of antimatter.
"Don't worry, the banana will not explode"
This is because bananas contain a small amount of potassium 40, as the isotope of potassium, as potassium 40 decays, the banana will release a positron in the process.
In addition, there is potassium 40 in the human body, but why do people not produce annihilation or a large amount of energy release?
In fact, although humans can emit positrons, they produce very little antimatter.
If all the antimatter released in a person's lifetime were annihilated, the energy it would produce would not be enough to heat a glass of water.
Antimatter is everywhere
The reason why antimatter is so expensive today, in addition to the trouble of making it, is also very difficult to preserve it , even if it is just a tiny bit.
Theoretically, producing 1 gram of antimatter requires approximately 25 million kilowatt hours of energy, which will cost 10 billion .
For example, the particle accelerator in Fermilab , all the antiprotons produced by it add up to only 15 nanograms . In addition, there are even fewer in some large underground particle research laboratories in Europe. They produce The weight of antimatter is only 1 nanogram.
CERN’s antimatter trap
According to CERN , producing just one billionth of a gram of antimatter requires hundreds of millions of grams of energy, and the cost of producing antimatter is $62.5 trillion per gram. look.
In addition to scientific uses, antimatter has very broad application prospects in the future.
In Medical , antimatter can help medical devices perform medical imaging.
such as positron emission tomography, abbreviated as PET. Through beta decay , nuclide emits positrons causing itself to lose excess positive charge .
Antimatter can be used in medicine
Nuclides with excess positive charges can be easily produced in cyclotrons and are widely used in medicine.
At present, the medical community has proven that antimatter therapy has certain medical potential in the treatment of certain cancers.
Of course, the most exciting part is Interstellar Travel . Through the energy emission caused by the collision of matter and antimatter, the entire rest mass of the particles will be converted into kinetic energy.
The energy per unit mass is approximately 10 orders of magnitude greater than chemical energy , while the nuclear energy used today is only 3 orders of magnitude greater.
Imaginary antimatter rocket
Scientific calculation and analysis of show that , if the antimatter rocket can be manufactured, its speed can reach about 72% of the speed of light.
But not all annihilation energy can lead to improvements in advancing technology.
In addition, in the reaction between protons and antiprotons, their energy immediately decays into high-energy photons .
The gamma ray photons generated by the reaction between electrons and positrons are difficult to guide for propulsion, and current research is still under theoretical exploration.
Annihilation or creation, this is the thinking that antimatter will bring to scientists .
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