On Friday 21 September 2007 06:06, John F. Sowa wrote:
> ...
>
> Re antimatter: The term "anti" may be misleading, because antimatter
> is of exactly the same nature as ordinary matter: it has mass, it
> obeys all the ordinary laws of physics, and a large object composed
> entirely of antimatter would look very much like one composed of
> ordinary matter.
>
> The reason why it is called antimatter is that it reacts violently
> with ordinary matter to create an enormous amount of energy.
> For example an electron and an anti-electron (also called a
> positron) annihilate one another by generating high-energy
> gamma rays. (01)
Actually, the energy of electron / positron annihilation is in the X-Ray
spectrum. You don't get to gamma ray energies until you have nucleon
annihilation, which isn't quite as "clean" as lepton annihilation.
I.e., there are products other than photons when nuclear particles
annihilate with their antimatter counterparts. (02)
> ...
>
> Therefore, ontologically, antimatter is just a form of matter. (03)
Definitely. (04)
The question is, will the same be true if we discover that there is a
physical counterpart to the notion of "negative energy density." That's
a very different kind of "anti" to everyday mass/energy. (05)
> John (06)
Randall Schulz (07)
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