Antimatter Explained - Ep. 1
CERN
30,530 views
What is antimatter?
Why do matter and antimatter annihilate and what happens when they do?
How much antimatter can we make and what can we use it for?
All of this in the first episode of Antimatter Explained.
20 Comments
@DandelionDogged 6 months ago
I've got this funny feeling like I'm watching our species acquire fire again. Like, I think this will probably be just as impactful, eventually.
@PaulMarostica 6 months ago (edited)
I've heard that whenever any matter particle is created, its twin antimatter particle is also simultaneously created. At CERN many particles are being created, but we're told very few antimatter particles are being captured. If this is true then most of the antimatter particles created are not captured. What is happening to those antimatter particles not captured? In this video it's said it is possible to create the anti atoms of all atoms. What anti atoms more massive than anti hydrogen have been created?
@KartikeyPatel-f8e 3 months ago
Satguru dev ki jay ♥ mox ki khoj me nikala tha or satguru shree shivkrupanand swami ji mile or sara gyan mila ♥ satguru dev ki jay ♥ is sanstha me atma ka ghyan milata he is sanstha me atma ki anubhuti milati he 🙏 satguru dev ki jay ♥ samarpan meditation 🙏 🧘♂️ guru tattva 🙏
@nickdegroot222 10 months ago
Very cool! I love the experimental and concrete perspective. It makes the topic so much more tangible!
@sobeyssobeys7876 2 months ago (edited)
I think, life is composed of energies from both matter and antimatter fields, not in absurdly high energy states of course, but low energy field oscillations. Life are matter energy and antimatter energy coupled, meaning they mutually restrain each other, wherein the magic of life manifest itself.
@chrisberdin 6 months ago (edited)
I heard it in Brian Cox's voice and narrated live on 20 different location of the planet.
@rjust2297 9 months ago
This is a fascinating and highly imaginative scenario! It blends pop culture with cutting-edge physics, and it touches on some very complex ideas about symmetry and quantum mechanics.
Here's an explanation of what a mirrored particle accelerator might imply and the problems or solutions a reflection would create.
🤯 The Mirrored Accelerator Chamber
In a typical particle accelerator like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, particles collide inside a vacuum chamber. The detectors like ATLAS and CMS are built around this chamber to record the results of these collisions.
If the collision chamber itself were a perfect mirror—meaning the internal surface acts as an ideal reflector of both light and matter/waves—the resulting physics would depend entirely on what kind of "reflection" we are talking about.
What Problem Would Reflection Create?
The most immediate problem a physical mirror would create is instability and disruption:
Beam Degradation: The particle beam (protons, for example) travels at nearly the speed of light in a vacuum. If a physical, mirrored wall existed, even a perfect one, the particles would collide with it. This collision would stop or scatter the particles, completely destroying the beam and preventing any useful, high-energy head-on collisions at the center.
Quantum Entanglement/Interference: If we imagine a perfect quantum mirror that somehow reflects the wave function of the particles:
The reflected wave function would interfere with the incoming wave function. This interference would make it virtually impossible to isolate a single, clean collision event. The results would be a messy superimposition of the actual collision and the interaction of the reflected particles, making data analysis unmanageable.
Uncertainty Principle: The physical act of "reflecting" the particle's wave function would likely violate the controlled, isolated conditions needed for precise measurements.
What Problem Would Reflection Solve? (A Thought Experiment on Symmetry)
The concept of a "mirrored chamber" or "reflection" is most deeply connected to a fundamental concept in physics called Symmetry—specifically, Parity (P) Symmetry.
Parity (P) Symmetry is the idea that the laws of physics should remain the same if you flip the coordinate system, like looking at an event in a mirror. For a long time, physicists believed this was always true.
The Solution/Discovery: If the mirror were not a physical surface, but an experimental setup designed to observe the event's "reflection," it could help solve the problem of broken Parity symmetry.
In the 1950s, scientists discovered that the Weak Nuclear Force (the force responsible for nuclear decay) breaks Parity Symmetry.
Observation: The reflection of a weak interaction event (like beta decay) does not obey the same physical laws as the original event. The particles produced (like neutrinos) always have a specific "handedness" or spin direction (helicity) that is not mirrored.
A "mirror chamber" could, hypothetically:
Isolate the Broken Symmetry: By comparing the outcomes of collisions in the normal chamber to the "mirrored" chamber (where all spatial coordinates are reversed), physicists could precisely measure the degree to which the laws of physics are not symmetric under reflection, revealing new details about the weak force and possibly other unknown forces.
Search for 'Mirror Matter': Some theories suggest the existence of a perfectly symmetric counterpart to our visible universe, sometimes called mirror matter or shadow matter. The "mirror chamber" could be a metaphorical way to design a detector sensitive to these hypothetical, reflection-symmetric particles that only interact via gravity or extremely weakly with our matter.
📐 Mathematical Representation of Reflection
In physics, a reflection (mirroring) of space is represented mathematically by the Parity Operator, \mathcal{P}. Applying the Parity Operator to a physical coordinate reverses its sign:
Here's an explanation of what a mirrored particle accelerator might imply and the problems or solutions a reflection would create.
🤯 The Mirrored Accelerator Chamber
In a typical particle accelerator like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, particles collide inside a vacuum chamber. The detectors like ATLAS and CMS are built around this chamber to record the results of these collisions.
If the collision chamber itself were a perfect mirror—meaning the internal surface acts as an ideal reflector of both light and matter/waves—the resulting physics would depend entirely on what kind of "reflection" we are talking about.
What Problem Would Reflection Create?
The most immediate problem a physical mirror would create is instability and disruption:
Beam Degradation: The particle beam (protons, for example) travels at nearly the speed of light in a vacuum. If a physical, mirrored wall existed, even a perfect one, the particles would collide with it. This collision would stop or scatter the particles, completely destroying the beam and preventing any useful, high-energy head-on collisions at the center.
Quantum Entanglement/Interference: If we imagine a perfect quantum mirror that somehow reflects the wave function of the particles:
The reflected wave function would interfere with the incoming wave function. This interference would make it virtually impossible to isolate a single, clean collision event. The results would be a messy superimposition of the actual collision and the interaction of the reflected particles, making data analysis unmanageable.
Uncertainty Principle: The physical act of "reflecting" the particle's wave function would likely violate the controlled, isolated conditions needed for precise measurements.
What Problem Would Reflection Solve? (A Thought Experiment on Symmetry)
The concept of a "mirrored chamber" or "reflection" is most deeply connected to a fundamental concept in physics called Symmetry—specifically, Parity (P) Symmetry.
Parity (P) Symmetry is the idea that the laws of physics should remain the same if you flip the coordinate system, like looking at an event in a mirror. For a long time, physicists believed this was always true.
The Solution/Discovery: If the mirror were not a physical surface, but an experimental setup designed to observe the event's "reflection," it could help solve the problem of broken Parity symmetry.
In the 1950s, scientists discovered that the Weak Nuclear Force (the force responsible for nuclear decay) breaks Parity Symmetry.
Observation: The reflection of a weak interaction event (like beta decay) does not obey the same physical laws as the original event. The particles produced (like neutrinos) always have a specific "handedness" or spin direction (helicity) that is not mirrored.
A "mirror chamber" could, hypothetically:
Isolate the Broken Symmetry: By comparing the outcomes of collisions in the normal chamber to the "mirrored" chamber (where all spatial coordinates are reversed), physicists could precisely measure the degree to which the laws of physics are not symmetric under reflection, revealing new details about the weak force and possibly other unknown forces.
Search for 'Mirror Matter': Some theories suggest the existence of a perfectly symmetric counterpart to our visible universe, sometimes called mirror matter or shadow matter. The "mirror chamber" could be a metaphorical way to design a detector sensitive to these hypothetical, reflection-symmetric particles that only interact via gravity or extremely weakly with our matter.
📐 Mathematical Representation of Reflection
In physics, a reflection (mirroring) of space is represented mathematically by the Parity Operator, \mathcal{P}. Applying the Parity Operator to a physical coordinate reverses its sign:
@alexvidakovic 9 months ago
CERN should have a motto saying "Creating more chaos out of chaos, and doing it over and over again". Which is the definition of insanity.
@ExpreArt 7 months ago
Our understanding of the universe is divided into three worldviews: the everyday scale, the galactic immensity, and the quantum world. We operate on three scales of reality: the human (or macroscopic) scale, the cosmological scale (galaxies and the universe), and the subatomic (or quantum) scale.
@moleculardescriptor 9 months ago
The question "Where did all the primordial antimatter go?" has is no widely accepted answer, so far. Back in 2013 I had a wild idea: If one takes Feynman's "backwards in time" view literally, then one can easily explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry! How? Well, at the moment of Big Bang not one but two Universe were created: Ours traveling forward in time and an anti-Universe traveling backwards in time. Therefore, the time axis in not a ray with definite origin, but a full axis with positive and negative direction. Thus, the antimatter simply separated from matter by traveling in the opposite direction in time. I posted this idea in one of the physics forums, don't remember which one, but received no answer. Oh well...
But it's such an obvious idea that someone else surely has thought about it. Two months ago I learned that indeed someone did. In 2018 physicists Neil Turok and Latham Boyle have published a paper titled "CPT-Symmetric Universe" that postulates the existence of a Mirror Universe, traveling backwards in time away from our own.
I can't post links in this comment, or YT will remove it, but you can easily find not only the article, but also Neil's YT channel with videos accessible to non-technical audience.
But it's such an obvious idea that someone else surely has thought about it. Two months ago I learned that indeed someone did. In 2018 physicists Neil Turok and Latham Boyle have published a paper titled "CPT-Symmetric Universe" that postulates the existence of a Mirror Universe, traveling backwards in time away from our own.
I can't post links in this comment, or YT will remove it, but you can easily find not only the article, but also Neil's YT channel with videos accessible to non-technical audience.
@daquion7830 10 months ago
Pozdrowienia z Polski ! Jak poprzednio pan Piotr bardzo dobrze wyjaśnia fizykę. Czy pan Piotr pisze pismem lustrzanym?
Antimatter Explained - Ep. 1
CERN
30,530 views
What is antimatter?
Why do matter and antimatter annihilate and what happens when they do?
How much antimatter can we make and what can we use it for?
All of this in the first episode of Antimatter Explained.