Is antimatter matter?

[Perspicuo]

I've thought about "stuff" and energy being two forms or transformations of matter, according to what every high-school graduate is taught. So in a similar way, can antimatter be counted as matter?

(I'm listening to Lawrence Krauss' Nobel conference, and the question just popped up in my head.)

 

[skepticalbip]

Is antimatter matter?

Absolutely. Antimatter has mass, reacts to gravity and electrical potentials, etc. Antimatter is matter with complementary properties of its matter equivalent. i.e. a positron is the antimatter equivalent of an electron. The difference being that they have opposite charges.

 

[Perspicuo]

ThanQ, Bip.


BTW, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBv7a5v8qoE is what I've been watching.
Great communicator, Krauss.

 

[Kharakov]

OMG, that girl is cute!!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's not the ether, is it? It's not energy. It's not space. It's not time. What's left?

 

[skepticalbip]

ThanQ, Bip.


BTW, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBv7a5v8qoE is what I've been watching.
Great communicator, Krauss.

Yeah, Lawrence Krauss is my favorite science popularizer. He talks directly without presenting philosophical concepts (sometimes really strange ones) and hypotheses as scientific fact like Brian Greene or Michio Kuku. I also like his self deprecation and humor. Krauss is good at explaining how we arrived at what we understand and what could be wrong with it rather than just stating what is thought to be real as if it absolutely was true.

 

[Kharakov]

ThanQ, Bip.


BTW, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBv7a5v8qoE is what I've been watching.
Great communicator, Krauss.

Yeah, Lawrence Krauss is my favorite science popularizer. He talks directly without presenting philosophical concepts (sometimes really strange ones) and hypotheses as scientific fact like Brian Greene or Michio Kuku. I also like his self deprecation and humor.

I like the guy's oratory skills, but his misuse of the word "nothing" annoys me. I might comment on his claims about vacuum energy later. Time to walk the dog...

 

[fromderinside]

If there are symmetries and one of those symmetries is matter why shouldn't antimatter be material? If our world is really an antimatter world what is that stuff that annihilates us called? Is it matter? Material I guess.

Sentences seem to to make sense in either order since one has to set up material to discuss the matter of matter and one has to present the symmetry of matter.

 

[fast]

I've thought about "stuff" and energy being two forms or transformations of matter, according to what every high-school graduate is taught. So in a similar way, can antimatter be counted as matter?

(I'm listening to Lawrence Krauss' Nobel conference, and the question just popped up in my head.)

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-antimatter-2002-01-24/

According to that link, yes.

Well, at least that's my conclusion based on the 1st and 4th paragraph.

 

[repoman]

So, antimatter was theorized first by Dirac and found by Anderson three years later.

I am reading a book where it explain that Dirac was saying that a hv >= 2m(electron)c^2 photon could make a free electron in a positive energy level and hole in a negative energy level which acts the same as a free positron in positive energy state. I am not sure if this analogy has any real meaning or was a stepping stone like Bohr's model of the atom.

He go that from solving the relativistic equation for the total energy of a free electron:

E =+/- (c²p² + (m₀c²0²))^1/2

and taking the negative sign to have real physical meaning instead of tossing it away.