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An actual matter-antimatter annihilation due to an atom of antihydrogen in the ATHENA experiment. The antiproton produces four charged pions (yellow) whose positions are given by silicon microstrips (pink) before depositing energy in CsI crystals (yellow cubes). The positron also annihilates to produce back-to-back gamma rays (red).
When a proton encounters its antiparticle (and more generally, if any species of baryon encounters the corresponding antibaryon), the reaction is not as simple as electron–positron annihilation. Unlike an electron, a proton is a composite particle consisting of three " valence quarks " and an indeterminate number of " sea quarks " bound by ...
The reaction of 1 kg of antimatter with 1 kg of matter would produce 1.8 × 10 17 J (180 petajoules) of energy (by the mass–energy equivalence formula, E=mc 2), or the rough equivalent of 43 megatons of TNT – slightly less than the yield of the 27,000 kg Tsar Bomba, the largest thermonuclear weapon ever detonated.
The CPT theorem implies that the difference between the properties of a matter particle and those of its antimatter counterpart is completely described by C-inversion. Since this C-inversion does not affect gravitational mass, the CPT theorem predicts that the gravitational mass of antimatter is the same as that of ordinary matter. [5]
A magnetic coil captures the exhaust products of this reaction, expelling them with an exhaust velocity of 12-20% the speed of light (35,000-60,000 km/s). As the spacecraft approaches 20% the speed of light, more antimatter is fed into the engines until it switches over to pure matter-antimatter annihilation. [2]
PAMELA (Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) was a cosmic ray research module attached to an Earth orbiting satellite. PAMELA was launched on 15 June 2006 and was the first satellite-based experiment dedicated to the detection of cosmic rays, with a particular focus on their antimatter component, in the form of positrons and antiprotons.
Antihydrogen atoms should be attracted to other matter or antimatter gravitationally with a force of the same magnitude that ordinary hydrogen atoms experience. [2] This would not be true if antimatter has negative gravitational mass, which is considered highly unlikely, though not yet empirically disproven (see gravitational interaction of ...
It is clear from the above calculations that a relativistic rocket would likely need to be antimatter-fired. [original research?] Other antimatter rockets in addition to the photon rocket that can provide a 0.6c specific impulse (studied for basic hydrogen-antihydrogen annihilation, no ionization, no recycling of the radiation [3]) needed for interstellar flight include the "beam core" pion ...