Antimatter...just a discovery or the biggest in history

Adrian A Figueroa Ramos

Many people think of antimatter as something impossible, not true, and also against religion. Certainly, religion has brought through time a big dispute against antimatter and many other scientific advances, which mostly has had to accept. It can be said that science is a type of anti-religion. In the world we can logically see the domination of matter, but as theory and science states, for every matter exists its complete opposite. This is why investigation has never and will not stop until stating the true and detailed definition of antimatter.

            In 1928, a British physicist named Paul Dirac revolutionized the world with the idea about that for every matter exists an antimatter of equal mass. He strictly said that if there were negative particles called electrons, there also should exist antielectrons, or positrons; these also applied to the protons, which he named antiprotons. The difference between electrons, protons and their antitype is the direction of the spin, which changes the charge, and when in contact it is said it will occur annihilation in form of liberation of energy. After this important discovery, Dirac earned the Nobel Prize of 1933.

           

After this discovery, in 1932, Carl Anderson confirmed Dirac’s theory in detecting the existence of positrons doing an experiment which procedure was the collision of cosmic rays. Two decades after Anderson’s invention, the physicists Emilio Segre and Owen Chamberlain, Clyde Weingand and Tom Ypsilantis managed to find the first antiproton. One year later, with the use of the same equipment, Bruce Cork, Oreste Piccione, William Wenzel and Glen Lambertson found the equivalent of neutral charged particles in atoms, called antineutrons.

            A new investigation center built in 1978 in Ginebra, CERN, became the biggest pioneer of the creation and investigation of antimatter. Scientists were able to create atoms of anti-tritium. Later in this facility occurred the first ever controlled collision between matter and antimatter, which proved a hypothesis:  the amount of released energy was enormous compared to conventional nuclear energy. In 1996 the CERN scientists announced the success of the experiment where they created nine antiatoms of hydrogen, or antihydrogen.

            Detecting antimatter in the cosmos hasn’t been easy. Actually, scientists have only observed a positron cloud detected near gammas rays who were also found by them, located near the center of the Milky Way. The origins of these rays and positrons are unknown but they think the home of their creation should be some place adjacent the center of the galaxy. The positron cloud detected could have also been formed by multiple star explosions, also in a black hole nearby the center of the Milky Way, or by the fusion of two neutron stars.

            As you can see, antimatter is something that needs much more investigation, but the proof of its existence is already done. This discovery could put to an end so many disturbances the Earth is suffering. Through work and research we hope antimatter can be used for the advantage in developing solutions for the natural changes the nature has experienced. The destiny of humanity is in danger. May the development of antimatter for the good be the solution?