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Is it possible to create an antimatter bomb?
A gram of antimatter could produce an explosion the size of a nuclear bomb. However, humans have produced only a minuscule amount of antimatter. All of the antiprotons created at Fermilab’s Tevatron particle accelerator add up to only 15 nanograms. Those made at CERN amount to about 1 nanogram.
Can photons interact?
Since light itself does not have electric charge, one photon cannot directly interact with another photon. Instead, they just pass right through each other without being affected. In this process, the energy of the photon is completely transformed into the mass of the two particles.
How was the earth created?
When the solar system settled into its current layout about 4.5 billion years ago, Earth formed when gravity pulled swirling gas and dust in to become the third planet from the Sun. Like its fellow terrestrial planets, Earth has a central core, a rocky mantle, and a solid crust.
Can photons interact with photons?
What does antimatter look like?
Although it sounds exotic, antimatter would look no different to matter if you came across a lump of it. Even individual atoms of matter and antimatter would be indistinguishable. It’s only inside the atoms that their true nature is evident. Inside atoms of matter – the stuff that makes everything – are electrons whirling around a central nucleus.
What happens when matter and antimatter destroy each other?
Even when matter and antimatter annihilate each other, they produce energy, in the form of photons, which are quantum units of light. If you were to build a molecule out of atoms, you wouldn’t be creating matter. An atom is matter as well — and so are the subatomic particles within it.
How long would it take to make a gram of antimatter?
Using current technology it would take 10 billion years to make a gramme, a billion bottles to store it and require at least as much energy as you’d get back. Perhaps the world is better off with a little antimatter safely stored. James is staff writer at BBC Science Focus magazine.
Is it possible for humans to make matter?
The nucleus shares the energy and allows the photon to disintegrate into an electron and a positron, the antimatter opposite of an electron. The positron inevitably turns back into a photon when it collides with an electron. So yes, humans can manufacture matter.