Thursday 16 June 2011

Anti Matter

Have you heard about Antimatter ? 
What we can touch in our nature is called matter.
If there is a mass then it is a matter.
Then what about light and sound ? 
They are called waves !!
In our nature there is no difference between male and female, there is no difference between  king and slaves,  Everybody is  matter. What a wonderful communist ideology !!  
Then what is matter ?
If you simply chop me piece by piece,  you will reach in an end called an atom. 
That means, an atom is the smallest form of the matter. You can see the image of an atom below.




An atom consists of  proton electron and neutron. But scientists have discovered other  interesting  type of particles called anti-protons, anti-electrons and anti-neutrons. 
What is the difference between an electron and  its anti-electron ? 
They are like twins but with exactly opposite sexual orientation  (their electric charge is different). Electron attracts the proton but the anti-electron repels the  proton.. Again there is great issue, If these twins (anti-particle and particle) meet each other,  they will catch fire and liberate huge amount of energy in the form of heat.
                          So an electron is extra neat guy and obey normal social rules but anti-electron obey an another rule by simply attracting the anti-proton and repelling the proton.

What if you mix the electron and proton ?                   
Of-course we will get an atom.
But if we mix anti-electron and anti-proton then also we will get an atom since they are attracting lovers and anti-electron will start to rotate around anti-proton just like in atom. This is called an anti-atom.
                     
If we group together large amount of anti-atoms we will get anti matter. May be in an another universe an another anti-you might be reading this blog. 




Suppose you have a desire to see that guy, ..Beware !!!
It is better  to keep that idea in your mind ...
Why ? you may ask....!
Because, if you and that anti-guy meet each other you are going to risk your life...you will become a grip of ash if you collide with him.

May be you have heard about the story of a blood licking wolf when two goats are fighting each-other . Scientist are like that, since they are focusing onto make use of the  wast amount of energy (heat) liberating   when matter and antimatter collision happens. 

One of their ideas is  to use antimatter as fuel  in spacecraft propulsion . NASA had already made the models of the space-craft which use the anti-matter as fuel (figure shows above).  Don't be too much optimistic,...  it will take years to achieve such a goal . But  scientists are thinking far ahead.  Suppose it will work ..then the duration of the space travel from Earth to Mars will take one month instead of the current eleven month duration.!!!
       



But there is a great problem, First you have to confirm whether there is any antimatter in our universe in  free form. Then you may doubt about my previous argument ? We made the anti-matter only inside the laboratory.  Actually  we made only three or four anti-hydrogen atom inside the laboratory. Getting antimatter in a large quantity and trapping it ,   is a great issue.
                                                                                                                                                                     Recently in CERN they have isolated anti-hydrogen for more or less 5 minute, that is a considerably huge time.
An interesting thing is that, recently NASA has launched a device to test the antimatter presence in our universe.  That is called  alpha magnetic 
spectrometer (figure on left-side ).  Aim of that mission is to detect  the presence of antimatter in galaxies. If it is a success then it  will be a success for mankind.



          In addition to that,  NASA says in an another experiment......If there is lightening then antimatter will get produced !!!
But that  is in a very small amount, because of that reason,  there isn't any chance of fuel production . I have included below a figure to describe the experimental set-up  that NASA used to detect the antimatter production during lightening. Hope you enjoyed...