Antimatter

by Frank Close

Of all the mind-bending discoveries of physics--quarks, black holes, strange attractors, curved space--the existence of antimatter is one of the most bizarre. It is also one of the most difficult, literally and figuratively, to grasp.

Antimatter explores this strange mirror world, where particles have identical yet opposite properties to those that make up the familiar matter we encounter everyday, where left becomes right, positive becomes negative, and where--should matter and antimatter meet--the resulting flash of blinding energy would make even thermonuclear explosions look feeble by comparison. Antimatter is an idea long beloved of science-fiction writers--but here, renowned science writer Frank Close shows that the reality of antimatter is even more intriguing than the fiction. We know that at one time antimatter and matter existed in perfect counterbalance, and that antimatter then perpetrated a vanishing act on a cosmic scale that remains one of the great mysteries of the universe. Today, antimatter does not exist normally, at least on Earth, but we know that it is real, as scientists are now able to make small pieces of it in particle accelerators, such as that at CERN in Geneva. Looking at the remarkable prediction of antimatter and how it grew from the meeting point of relativity and quantum theory in the early 20th century, at the discovery of the first antiparticles, at cosmic rays, annihilation, antimatter bombs, and antiworlds, Close separates the facts from the fiction about antimatter, and explains how its existence can give us profound clues about the origins and structure of the universe.

For all those wishing to take a closer look at the flip side of the visible world, this lucidly written book shines a bright light into a truly strange realm.

"Beautifully written... This book will inspire a sense of awe in even the most seasoned of physics readers."
--Amanda Gefter, New Scientist

"This is a must read for fans of science and science fiction alike." --John Gribbin, www.bbcfocusmagazine.com

Genres: Science, Physics, Nonfiction, Popular Science, Stem, Quantum Mechanics, History

176 pages, Hardcover

First published March 30, 2009

About the author

Francis Edwin Close (Arabic: فرانك كلوس)

In addition to his scientific research, he is known for his lectures and writings making science intelligible to a wider audience.

From Oxford he went to Stanford University in California for two years as a Postdoctoral Fellow on the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. In 1973 he went to the Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire and then to CERN in Switzerland from 1973–5. He joined the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire in 1975 as a research physicist and was latterly Head of Theoretical Physics Division from 1991. He headed the communication and public education activities at CERN from 1997 to 2000. From 2001, he was Professor of Theoretical Physics at Oxford. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Birmingham from 1996–2002.

Close lists his recreations as writing, singing, travel, squash and Real tennis, and he is a member of Harwell Squash Club.

Reviews

[Ericka Clou · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very short book about antimatter, but it took me a really long time to read because it was very difficult to understand in places. The beginning gave the impression of being more of a popular science book with lots of bad jokes and whatnot but things grew in complexity to the point where I was rereading certain sentences again and again. I don't regret reading it because its specificity to antimatter makes it different than the more general physics material I've read (like when I read that book on black holes, The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics), but it was tough going.

It's also almost 10 years out of date now, so if I really want to know about antimatter, I'm going to have to update myself on the more recent discoveries.

[Iman Shabani · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am happy that this was the book to close down 2020 for me book-wise.

I've always wanted to read on the matter of antimatter (pun intended), and never got around to do it really. This short book was just what I was missing, and now because of this I can say I know what and why about Antimatter. It definitely lit a candle for me, and I might even follow up on the topic at some point because of this small book. Kudos to the writer.

Give this one a shot, and you won't be disappointed.

[Maarten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Antimatter has fascinating subject matter, but Frank Close fails to explain it particularly well. I constantly felt that I needed my pre-existing knowledge to understand what was being said, which in turn only brought me up to the level of my pre-existing knowledge. In general the book feels confused and all over the place, the author seemingly just not being very good at popular scientific explanation. That said, it is still about antimatter and antimatter is still incredibly interesting, which is really the only reason for my 3 star rating.

[Upom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pop culture uses a lot of science buzzwords that it doesn't well understand. Words like "quantum mechanics", "relativity" and "antimatter" get thrown around all the time in books, action movies, and science fiction with very little awareness of their reality. Though it is a great way to introduce people to science, but leads to misunderstanding, and even fear. I'm glad Close wrote this nifty little book to help fix some of these . In this short volume, (yes another one, I know), "Antimatter" looks at the history and science of these strange particles that are annihilated by their matter counterparts. Reviewing the history of antimatter from Dirac's early theorizing of their existence to modern research in laboratories worldwide, Close's accessible writing lets you understand much of the dark matter(tee-hee) surrounding not only antimatter, but subatomic physics as a whole. He also examines claims of a lump of antimatter hitting Tunguska, Russia in 1908, as well as the economic feasibility of antimatter propulsion and weaponry. Close's chapter on matrices was a bit clunky, but the rest of the book was easy to comprehend. If you have a couple hours to kill, and want to know about subatomic physics, this is a really great read.

[Shatabdi Roy · Rating 5 out of 5]

ওয়েস্টমিনস্টার অ্যাবে — গ্রেট ব্রিটেনের অন্যতম গুরুত্বপূর্ণ স্থাপনা।অনেকগুলো পরিচয় আছে এর, কারণ বিশাল স্থাপনাটি পরতে পরতে জড়িয়ে রেখেছে ইতিহাস, ঐতিহ্য আর সংস্কৃতির নানা অনুষঙ্গ। তবে এখন আমরা এগোব একটু উত্তর দিকে, যেখানে চিরনিদ্রায় শায়িত হয়ে আছেন স্যার আইজ্যাক নিউটন, পাশে চার্লস ডারউইন। দুই জায়ান্টের মাঝে পরবর্তীতে সমাহিত করা হয়েছে তাঁদেরই উত্তরসূরী স্টিফেন হকিংয়ের দেহাবশেষ। নিউটনের বিষয়বহুল সমাধি থেকে দৃষ্টি সরিয়ে এবার তাকাবো আরেকটু সামনে – যেখানে এক চতুষ্কোণ ফলকে খোদাই করা আছে পদার্থবিজ্ঞান ও গণিতের আরেক বরপুত্রের নাম আর তাঁর অনিন্দ্যসুন্দর সৃষ্টি – দ্য ডিরাক ইকুয়েশন। অদ্ভুত সুন্দর এই ইকুয়েশনটা শেকসপিয়রের সাহিত্য কিংবা বেথোভেনের মেলোডির চেয়ে কোনো অংশে কম যায় না। এই সেই সমীকরণ, যার হাত ধরে প্রকৃতির সবটুকু সৌন্দর্য ধরা দিয়েছিল ডিরাকের কাছে; আর বেরিয়ে এসেছিল একটা বৈপ্লবিক ধারণা- প্রতিপদার্থের অস্তিত্বের সম্ভাবনা!
তবে একটা তত্ত্বের সৌন্দর্য বা সুষমাই আমাদের কাছে শেষ কথা নয়, আমরা চাই এর কার্যকারিতাকে নিশ্চিত করতে। তাই এই রহস্যময় প্রতিপদার্থ তথা অ্যান্টিম্যাটারকে বন্দি করতে তৈরি করা হল ভূগর্ভে এ প্রান্ত থেকে ওপ্রান্তে বিস্তৃত বিশাল কারাগার, তাতে বসানো হল তড়িৎ আর চৌম্বকক্ষেত্রের শক্ত পাহারা। নিজের খাঁচাকেই ধ্বংস করে দেয়, এমন সর্বগ্রাসী শক্তিধরকে বন্দি করার আপাত অসম্ভব কাজটি সম্ভব হলো। যার সামান্যতম স্পর্শই আমাদের চেনা জগৎকে নিঃশেষ করে দিতে পারে, তার হাত ধরেই আমরা এগোতে থাকলাম আমাদের সৃষ্টির রহস্য উন্মোচনের পথে।
কিন্তু কীভাবে হল এসব? ডিরাকের মতো স্বল্পভাষী নির্ঝঞ্ঝাট মানুষটিই কেন পেলেন এই বিধ্বংসীর খোঁজ? কীভাবেই বা তাদের সত্যিকার অর্থেই হাতে পেলাম আমরা? আর একসময়ের আক্ষরিক অর্থেই “অ্যানাদার ম্যাটার” কীভাবে হয়ে উঠল আমাদের দৈনন্দিন সায়েন্স ফ্যান্টাসির অবিচ্ছেদ্য অংশ? সবগুলো প্রশ্নের উত্তর পাবার জন্য আমাদের ঢুকতে হবে “অ্যান্টিম্যাটার” বইটির দুই মলাটের ভেতরে।
নয়টি পরিচ্ছেদ, আর তাদের মধ্যে মোট ৪৮টি উপশিরোনামে লেখক তুলে ধরেছেন অ্যান্টিম্যাটারের ধারণার ক্রমবিকাশ আর আমাদের এই বুদ্ধিবৃত্তিক অর্জনের রূপরেখা। সাথে বাড়তি পাওনা হিসেবে আছে দুটি বিচিত্র পরিশিষ্ট। তবে পাঠকদের চোখ প্রথমেই আটকাবে “শুরুর আগে” অর্থাৎ জেনেসিসে, অনেকটা যেন মহাবিস্ফোরণের আটকে পড়া ফোটনদের মতো — যারা কিছুক্ষণ পরেই মুক্তি পেয়ে ছুটে বেড়াবে মহাবিশ্বের এ প্রান্ত থেকে ওপ্রান্তে, আর যাদের হাত ধরেই পরবর্তীতে তৈরি হওয়া একতাল পরমাণুর কিছু স্পেশাল কম্বিনেশন ১৩.৮ বিলিয়ন বছর পরে তাকাতে চেষ্টা করবে সেই পর্দাটির ওপারে, জানতে চাইবে ওই ফোটনদের জন্মইতিহাস, আর দেখাবে তাদের নিজের আয়নাটির অন্যদিকের জগতে উঁকি দেবার দুঃসাহস। আয়নার ওপাশেই প্রতিপদার্থের সেই অদ্ভুতুড়ে জগৎ — আর সেখাতেই পাঠকদের স্বাগত জানিয়েছেন লেখক ফ্র‍্যাঙ্ক ক্লোজ। ব্রিটিশ এই কণাপদার্থবিদ এখানে শুধু প্রতিপদার্থের চমৎকার বৈজ্ঞানিক পরিচয় দিয়েই ক্ষান্ত হননি, সাম্প্রতিক সময়ে আমাদের দেখা “প্রতিপদার্থ বোমা” র মতো উচ্চাভিলাষী স্বপ্ন (কিংবা দুঃস্বপ্ন) এবং আরও নানা ফ্যান্টাসির সাথে ফ্যাক্টের পার্থক্যের সূক্ষ্ম ইঙ্গিতও দিয়ে দিয়েছেন এই জেনেসিস অংশেই। কিন্তু সেসবের বিস্তারিত জানবার আগে আমাদের পেরিয়ে আসতে হবে আরও আটটি তাত্ত্বিক অধ্যায়— যেগুলো আরও অনেক অ-নে-ক বেশি রোমাঞ্চকর!
প্রথম অধ্যায়টিকে বলা চলে প্রতিপদার্থের কেতাবি পরিচয়। আধুনিক কণাপদার্থবিদ্যার নানা হাইপোথিসিস, ধ্যানধারণা এবং সবচেয়ে কাছ থেকে দেখা প্রতিপদার্থকে দিয়েই আমাদের যাত্রা শুরু। এরপরের অধ্যায়দুটোতে একটু পেছনে ফিরে তাকানো, বোঝার চেষ্টা করা আমাদের সৃষ্টির ইতিহাসকে। আর এরই মাঝে দেখতে পাব, কোনো এক ফাঁকে জেনারেল রিলেটিভিটির পথ বেয়ে ডিরাকের হাতে চলে এসেছে ঋণাত্মক শক্তির প্রমাণ; যে শক্তি লুকিয়ে আছে আমাদের পরিচিত জগতের এক অদ্ভুত অদৃশ্য প্রতিবিম্বের মধ্যে। সেই প্রতিবিম্ব, যাকে আমরা বলি প্রতিপদার্থ—যদি পদার্থকে কোনোভাবে একটু ছুঁয়ে দেয়, তবে এক বিস্ফোরণের মধ্যে দুজনের অস্তিত্বই বিলীন হয়ে যাবে, থেকে যাবে শুধু তীব্র আলোর ঝলকানি । প্রতিপদার্থের ধারণার সাথে সাথেই জন্ম নিল আরেকটি প্রশ্ন- এমন দুই চিরপ্রতিদ্বন্দ্বীর উপস্থিতি সত্ত্বেও কেন কোনো কিছুর অস্তিত্ব রয়ে গেল মহাবিশ্বে? প্রকৃতির এই রহস্যময় পক্ষপাতিত্বের হদিশ পাওয়া যাবে অষ্টম অধ্যায়ে, কিন্তু তার আগে পেরোতে হবে পদার্থের বিশ্বে প্রতিপদার্থ তৈরি এবং সংরক্ষণ করে তাদের বৈশিষ্ট্য বোঝার চ্যালেঞ্জ— সব মিলিয়ে রহস্যে ঘেরা এই মহাবিশ্বের প্লটে দুর্ধর্ষ এক গোয়েন্দা অভিযান এই “অ্যান্টিম্যাটার”।
আর স্পয়লার না দিয়ে শেষ কটা কথা বলে ফেলি। “Antimatter” প্রথম প্রকাশিত হয় ২০০৯ সালে, আর একুশে বইমেলা ২০২১ এ প্রথমা প্রকাশন বাংলাভাষী পাঠকদের হাতে তুলে দেয় এর বাংলা অনুবাদ। ভাষান্তর করেছেন উচ্ছ্বাস তৌসিফ। অবশ্য “ভাষান্তর” নয়, বলা উচিত “বাংলায়ন”। এই বাংলায়ন শব্দটার শুদ্ধতা নিয়ে সন্দেহ থাকলেও যৌক্তিকতা নিয়ে আমি বিন্দুমাত্র সন্দিহান নই। বইটির মৌলিক সৌন্দর্যকে অক্ষুণ্ণ রাখার সাথে সাথেই বাঙালি পাঠকদের জন্য একটা নিজস্বতার পরিবেশ তৈরি করতে পারাটা নিঃসন্দেহে একটা চমৎকার ব্যাপার। আর পপ সায়েন্সের মেজাজের সাথেই মূল বই ও পরিশিষ্ট অংশের প্রয়োজনীয় গাণিতিক আলোচনাও একদম চমৎকারভাবে খাপ খেয়ে গেছে। তথ্যনির্দেশ অংশটুকুও বইটির গুরুত্বপূর্ণ অংশ, তবে এটি একেবারে শেষে সংযুক্ত করার বদলে প্রতি অধ্যায়ের সাথে যোগ করা হলে বোধহয় পাঠকদের জন্য বেশি সুবিধাজনক হতো। আর বাকি রইল তথ্যসূত্র, যেটা কিনা বইটা শেষ করার পরে প্রত্যেক পাঠকেরই একবারের জন্য হলেও প্রয়োজন পড়বে, কৌতূহল যে বড় বালাই!
তাহলে চলুন, আর কথা না বাড়িয়ে বেরিয়ে পড়া যাক প্রতিপদার্থের এই রহস্যময় জগতের এক মানসভ্রমণে। তাছাড়া, অ্যান্টিম্যাটার ফুয়েল পাওয়া যাক বা না যাক, সত্যিকারের মহাজাগতিক অভিযানে বেরিয়ে দূর গ্যালাক্সির কোনো এলিয়েনের দেখা তো পেয়ে যেতেই পারি আমরা। তখন তার সাথে হাত মেলানোটা নিরাপদ হবে কি না, সেটাও তো জানতে হবে!

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Frank Close's short book on anti-matter requires a basic understanding of maths and physics too far for my own mind (education and understanding), which explains why I started this book at the time of its publication and never advanced very far. This time, even while I didn't grasp some of its implications, I made a determined attempt at keeping pace with the maths, the physics and the implications. Such an implication is the energy trapped within ordinary matter, and antimatter, and how the laws of motion (Newton) and relativity (Einstein) become the building blocks for understanding the counter-intuitive picture at the very small scale: what happens inside atoms at the elementary level of quantum mechanics. You need to understand some basic principles in order to understand anti-matter. And much of this stuff was questioned, explored and worked out in the first half of the twentieth century. So, humbly accepting that I am at least one century and at least a degree in advanced applied maths and physics behind, I stumbled on through.

I've now read a few articles and a couple of books on quantum physics, which is represented by the Standard Model of elementary particles and forces, and I still have little idea what the job of the weak nuclear forces (W⁻, W⁺, and Z⁰) are, apart from the first applying a negative charge to a particle produced in an elementary reaction, the W⁺ a positive force, and the Z⁰.... no. The Z⁰ boson is chargeless but of great mass, compared to the photon, which has no mass. That I understand. From Wikipedia: 'The Z boson mediates the transfer of momentum, spin and energy when neutrinos scatter elastically from matter (a process which conserves charge). [...] The Z boson is not involved in the absorption or emission of electrons or positrons. Whenever an electron is observed as a new free particle, suddenly moving with kinetic energy, it is inferred to be a result of a neutrino interacting with the electron (with the momentum transfer via the Z boson).' Ah, I see. So the W bosons are involved in transfer of electrical charge in the creation of new electrons or positrons (anti-electrons), and the Z for the transfer of other properties than charge in the scatter of neutrinos. Ok. Onwards....

The problem is that I do not feel a sense of coherent development in this history of antimatter. While Close goes through the search for the elementary particles and of the equivalent forms of their anti-particles in a roughly historical survey, concepts, courses and discoveries follow like a list. What I can glean of the main findings is that each elementary particle has its anti-particle, some are more massive than others, each has its opposite charge, each is facilitated by its associated boson force, and they are very difficult and costly to produce, and even more so to store and use. Close uses the final chapter to delineate between science fact and fiction, and this is principally why I am reading it.

As a book, it's informative as far as a lay person can garner, but as a piece of writing, it's not something I would have stayed with but for its information. I didn't the first time round, but I did, just, this time. However, I was not captivated by its story, and any piece of science writing aimed at the lay reader must do that for the most part. I missed the wonder of it all. It is only when getting to chapter 7 (of 9), The Mirror Universe, that the implications of antimatter become impressive.

Close discusses Richard Feynman's amazingly simple yet profoundly elegant visual diagrams for describing the motion and interaction of elementary particles. While Feynman is credited with such an elegant system used in particle physics today, the ideas and imagery were developed by Swiss Ernst Stueckelberg in 1941, eight years earlier, but not published internationally because of the war. Close then goes on to discuss entropy, the idea that on a macro scale, the order of matter tends towards disorder: an egg smashing into bits, and each time, into different permutations of bits. He uses the imagery of a snooker game (here, with 10, not 15 red balls) as an example of the small interactions that are largely indeterminate at the level of particle physics. Once the white is struck at the red balls, the permutations of the actions of the game are limitless and each game is unique. But if one looked at the white striking the black into the corner pocket, playing it backwards from before the black dropped in would look like the mirror image of the real action. Similarly, step back and look at the planets orbiting the Sun, and playing it backwards would be a mirror image.

However, at the macro scale - say, of atoms behaving in large groups - Newton's laws of motion pay no attention to time; "they are invariant when 'P' ('parity', or mirror symmetry) and 'T' (for 'time reversal') are applied to them" (p.103) . An "antiparticle could be regarded as a particle that was travelling backwards in time" (p.102). Boom! Suddenly, an entirely new concept is shunted into the mind - and now we get some small notion of how Einstein thought when he came up with the idea of explaining gravity as the curvature of spacetime. We are now in the wondrous world of physics. There are some big leaps with some big ideas crammed into a few pages here, but intuitively, you follow along.

However, it quickly diminishes into a look at the kaon. And once more I am almost lost; except that, the kaon demonstrates proof that there is a slight difference between matter and antimatter in the slight variations over its decay - and thus proof that such a difference in minute variations helps support the Big Bang tenet that matter evolved, and not antimatter, most of which was annihilated. Most. How and where did the rest survive? In an antimatter galaxy somewhere? Now Close verges into the science fiction.

As Close rounds off his survey with a rejection of the science fiction promulgated by popular novelists and the US Air Force alike in creating a form of enery that could either save the planet or destroy it, I find myself in the position of not really understanding the fact from the fiction, having been exposed to so much new information in a form I found both hard to comprehend and then retain. Pions, kaons, majorons, the three flavours of neutrinos, all have hit me as incidental parts of the story I have not been able to understand because the founding premise (such as, neutrinos are formed in the nuclear fusion process inside the Sun and radiated out to Earth...) of what these particles are, how they come to be born, and what their significance is in the whole story has become jumbled up and unclear.

Consequently, I leave this short book feeling more stupid than when I started, rather than better informed. Is this a problem with me, or a problem with the way these complex (to lay people) concepts have been written about? Well, partly me, I am sure, yet I have just read a book on the Big Bang and the inflationary and cyclic models of the universe and understood much (but certainly not all) of that. One of the problems of having a short book on the subject is that it is necessarily a brief survey which largely steers clear of the complex physics and maths behind this arcane subject. One of the disadvantages is that necessary components of the story are injected into a developing argument as already having been explained earlier, rather than recapitulating that explanation now so that we might follow along. The book, for me, jumps from one issue to the other without a clear pattern of flow through it, which made it difficult for me to follow along with interest or (near-to) full comprehension.

I come away with the almost certainty that it is so far away from our technological capability to produce cost-efficient quantities of antimatter in sufficient bulk (grams, kilograms) as an alternative energy supply - whether for powering the grid, blowing things up, or going to Mars - that it would take, at the current technological rate of development, millions of years to produce a gram of antimatter. In that sense, antimatter is a dead issue. In the sense that it has been allowing scientists to understand more clearly the initial conditions within the first billionth of a second in the Big Bang, antimatter is key. However, that arcane knowledge is precious to maybe a few, whereas the idea of powering a city or a space ship to Mars is of interest to many. That it cannot be done with antimatter - for reasons of cost, the energy required to make and store it, and so on - is the conclusion of this book.

Therefore, I must return to science fiction and thousands of years in the future. I likely won't be turning back to this book, though.

[Zhivko Kabaivanov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Antimatter (2010) is a detailed look at one of the most mysterious and misunderstood topics in physics: antimatter. This accessible guide explains what antimatter is, how it works, and what it can teach us about the universe.

[Bloodmoon98 · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece. with clear language and irony Close managed to explain how the world of antimatter works and which experiments around the world pursue the research about it. absolutely recomended

[Arno Mosikyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

EXCERPTS:

In the entire universe, as far as we can tell, matter and not antimatter is the norm. It seems that the destruction of antimatter was one of the first acts after the Big Bang.

If a lump of matter is your fuel, then antimatter is the spark that will release its energy in ways that, theoretically at least, cannot be bettered in nature. This is why some have cited the Tunguska event to have been the result of antimatter hitting the atmosphere.

The positron did not pre-exist within that atom any more than a bark exists inside a dog; it was the energy release that created it.

The positron flies away from the atom and lives only so long as it avoids meeting an electron. As our world is made of atoms, which all contain electrons, the positron soon bumps into one, these counterbalanced opposites disappearing in a flash of gamma rays, which is light far beyond the part of the spectrum that our eyes can see. Special instruments however can detect these rays, which are exploited in medicine in the PET scanner— positron emission tomography. Antimatter destroys, but in controlled circumstances this can paradoxically be a life saver.

On a larger scale, nature produces positrons in the heart of the sun. The sunlight that shines on us today is in part a result of positrons that were created in the centre of the sun some 100,000 years ago, only to be annihilated almost immediately. The sun is mostly hydrogen, the simplest element. In its centre where the temperature exceeds 10 million degrees, the hydrogen atoms are disrupted into their component pieces, electrons and protons swarming independently and at random. The protons occasionally bump into one another and through a sequence of processes link together, eventually forming the seed of helium, which is the next simplest element. Helium is the ash from this fusion reaction and has less mass than the protons that were used to make it. This loss in mass has turned into energy, E = mc2 at work, which is ultimately the energy that emerges as sunlight. So what do positrons have to do with this? A helium nucleus contains two protons and two neutrons. Under suitable circumstances a proton can change into a neutron and emit energy some of which materializes as a positron, similar to what happens in the positron emitters of earthly medicine. The positron finds itself in the heart of the sun, where there are lots of electrons, and is instantly destroyed, turned into gamma rays. These try to rush away at the speed of light but are interrupted by the crowd of electrically charged particles, electrons, and protons that form the seething star. Buffeted this way and that, repeatedly absorbed by electrons and then emitted with less energy than before, it will take a hundred thousand years before gamma rays manage to reach the surface, hundreds of thousands of kilometers above. In doing so the rays lose lots of energy, their character changing from X-rays to ultra-violet and at last into the rainbow of colours that are visible to our eyes. So daylight is the result of antimatter being produced in the heart of the sun and, in part, of its annihilation.
It would require more than a billion atoms in a chemical explosive to produce as much energy as could be liberated by the annihilation of a single electron. Annihilate a single gram of antimatter, (about 1/25th of an ounce), and you would obtain as much energy as you could get from the fuel tanks of two dozen conventional space shuttles. Positron energy conversion would be a revolutionary energy source which would interest those who wage war as just half a gram explosively equates to 20 kilotons, the size of the bomb at Hiroshima.4 It is no surprise then that if antimatter can be produced and stored until needed, it has the potential for power that would interest the space industry, or for weapons that would excite the military. I have no doubt that these possibilities are being actively investigated. This book will tell the story of antimatter, what it is, how it was discovered, how we can make it, and what opportunities and threats it could pose. It will also assess the reality of antimatter as fuel for space odysseys and for weapons.
So, what is antimatter? Saying that it is the opposite of matter is easy on the ear, but what actually is ‘opposite’ about it?

Nearly all of the atoms of oxygen that you breathe, and of the carbon in your skin or the ink on this page, were made in stars about five billion years ago when the earth was first forming. So we are all stardust or, if you are less romantic, nuclear waste, for stars are nuclear furnaces with hydrogen as their primary fuel, starlight their energy output and assorted elements their ‘ash’ or waste products.
So even at the basic level of atoms, matter and antimatter look the same: the source of their contrast is buried deeper still.

The force of gravity rules the galaxies, planets, and falling apples, and keeps our feet on the ground. However it is electric and magnetic forces that give us shape and structure. The electromagnetic force is much more powerful than gravity, but in bulk matter the attractions and repulsions of the positive and negative charges tend to cancel out, leaving the all-attractive force of gravity as dominant.
Such a swapping of charges would turn what we know as matter into what we call antimatter. An anti-atom of antihydrogen would consist of a negative ‘antiproton’ encircled by a positively charged ‘positron’. Paul Dirac, who first predicted that such a mirror image of matter should exist, summarized this enigma on receiving his Nobel Prize in 1933:

We must regard it rather as an accident that the Earth (and presumably the whole Solar System) contains a preponderance of negative electrons and positive protons. It is quite possible that for some of the stars it is the other way about, these stars being built up mainly of [positively charged electrons] and negative protons.

When large numbers of atoms are involved, Newton’s laws of certainty emerge from the underlying quantum rules.

It is these quantum laws, when combined with Einstein’s theory of relativity, that reveal that just one form of matter is not enough: the act of creation in the Big Bang must have made two counterbalanced varieties.

Said another way: in a millionth of a second an electron makes more circuits of the central proton than the earth has made around the sun in its entire history.

The emergence of substance from pure energy, of which the purest form is light, is almost biblical in scope. With antimatter, the negative image of matter, we make contact with the gods of creation.
There’s matter, like the electron; antimatter, like the positron; and then there are things that are neither matter nor antimatter. The most familiar example of something that is beyond substance is electromagnetic radiation. All electromagnetic radiation, from gamma rays through X-rays and ultra-violet to visible light, infrared, and radio waves, consists of photons of different energies.
Matter and antimatter can cancel one another out, their annihilation leaving non-substance in the form of photons; if the conditions are right this sequence can happen in reverse where photons turn into pieces of matter and antimatter. The photon of light is just one example of over a hundred known examples of particles that are non-substance. Such entities are known as ‘bosons’, after the Indian physicist Satyendranath Bose. By contrast, substantial particles that are basic pieces of matter or of antimatter are known as ‘fermions’, after the Italian Enrico Fermi. The behaviour of fermions is described by Dirac’s equation; bosons follow different rules.

One of the results of Dirac’s work was the discovery that the electromagnetic field itself is ruled by quantum theory. Photons are particle-like bundles of electromagnetic radiation, and they transmit the electromagnetic force as they flit between one charged particle and another. In modern ‘quantum field theory’, not just the electromagnetic force but all the forces are transmitted by bosons. What the photon does for the electromagnetic force, so the ‘graviton’ is believed to do for gravity. No one has yet detected a graviton, but few doubt that it exists and that some day it will be found.

The battle between matter and antimatter in the universe was fought fourteen billion years ago, and matter won.

Fermions give rise to structure, they have stability and lead to life. We are formed from atoms that have existed for billions of years, it is only now that they are configured in combinations that think they are us. We breathe in oxygen, exhale carbon dioxide, grow and die, but our atoms will go on. Their basic pieces will recombine with infinite variety into the distant future, so long as they do not meet antimatter. Dehmelt had proved what the theorists suspected: we live in a world of matter, but the vacuum is full of both ‘virtual’ antimatter and ‘virtual’ matter, virtual in the sense that it does not materialize (maybe that should read ‘anti-materialize’) but whose presence can be inferred by its effects on passing particles of matter.

One of the implications of Stueckelberg’s diagrams was that an antiparticle could be regarded as a particle that was travelling backwards in time.

This creates mental images of antimatter being truly exotic; that in watching positrons we are sensing electrons arriving from the future. If in the first moment matter and antimatter emerged equally from the Big Bang, an instant later they should have annihilated one another. This gives another perspective on the question. The mystery is less about why antimatter has disappeared, and more a question of why has matter survived? Perhaps the answer is that there is some difference between them, that they are not perfect mirrors of one another.

The complex interactions that make amino-acids, DNA, and life will equally allow anti-elements to make everything in anti-DNA, even anti-life.

The chemistry of antimatter is the same as matter: antiplanets and antimatter in all its forms are as realizable as the more familiar matter which dominates the known universe. Are antigalaxies of antistars surrounded by antiplanets of antimatter awaiting unsuspecting astronauts in the far reaches of the universe? How sure are we that there is no antimatter at large, out there somewhere?
How can we know the make-up of a distant star, seen only as a faint candle across the vastness of space? All we see from earth is the starlight and as we have no reason to suppose that the spectra of the anti-elements are any different from those of the elements, we cannot tell stars from antistars simply by looking out into the night sky.

All of the evidence suggests that, with the exception of transient antiparticles produced like the above, everything within several hundred million light years of us is made of matter. This is a huge volume, to be sure, but only a fraction of the visible universe. There is still a lot of unexplored space where antimatter could dominate. Could matter and antimatter have become separated into large independent domains?

On the average every five cubic metres of outer space contains one proton, no antiprotons and ten billion quanta of radiation. Everything that we know about the early universe, from theory, observations and the results of experiments at LEP, suggests that in the hot aftermath of the Big Bang those numbers would have been ten billion quanta of radiation, ten billion antiprotons, and ten billion and one protons. The inference is that one of the first acts after creation was a Great Annihilation such that the matter-dominated universe today is made from the surviving one out of ten billion protons. Everything out there today is the remnant of an even grander creation.

So whereas chemical reactions convert just one part in a billion of matter’s trapped energy, nuclear reactions can liberate up to about 1 per cent. If we could transform larger fractions of matter into energy, our ambitions would expand in parallel. In principle we could liberate the full mc2 latent within matter into energy. That is the promise of antimatter.

All cultures have wondered about their origins, and the paradox of how something came from nothing. Why the Big Bang occurred no one yet knows, but out of its energy everything that we know was born. And it is beams of antimatter, first antiprotons and then positrons, that have enabled us to simulate the early universe in experiments, and begin to understand what it was like when less than a billionth of a second old. This is an astounding achievement of the human intellect: of groups of atoms collected together and able to think, to look out in wonder at the universe that made us, and build machines that can revisit our origins in the Big Bang. And the tool that made all this possible is antimatter. With such inspirations in fact, who needs fiction?

[Samsara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short but concise. Manage to get anti-matter explained clearly. Smart choice of topic. It might be wise to focus in one topic, and do it well!

Though, it still has not explained why nothing can give Boson and Fermion, both energy and matter (as well as anti-matter). We don't know, right?

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A helium nucleus contains two protons and two neutrons. Under suitable circumstances a proton can change into a neutron and emit energy some of which materializes as a positron. The positron finds itself in the heart of the sun, where there are lots of electrons, and is instantly destroyed, turned into gamma rays. Buffeted this way and that, repeatedly absorbed by electrons and then emitted with less energy than before, it will take a hundred thousand years before gamma rays manage to reach the surface. In doing so the rays lose lots of energy, their character changing from X-rays to ultra-violet and at last into the rainbow of colours that are visible to our eyes.


‘The Dirac Code’. iγ · ∂ψ =mψ

To get the accounting right, Dirac needed to find two quantitties that when multiplied together give zero, whereas each individually squared gives one.

Solutoin: Matrix

if you multiply two matrices in the order a ×b the answer is not necessarily the same as if you do it in reverse order, b ×a. They can satisfy a2 = 1; b2 = 1. And although a ×b is not zero, neiher is b ×a zero, their sum can be: a × b + b × a = 0. He had been forced to write his theory with simple numbers replaced by matrices that consisted of four columns with four numbers in each.

Apparently Einstein could only be satisfied if an electron both had spin and also either positive or negative energy.

The top of the ladder corresponds to zero energy, all the rungs below being the possible negative energy states for electrons.

In Dirac’s interpretation of the vacuum, if one electron in this sea were missing, it would leave a hole. The absence of a negatively charged electron with energy that is negative relative to sea-level, will appear as a positively charged particle with positive energy, namely with all the attributes of what was later called a positron.


PTE Scan:
There might be nuclear decays where a proton turned into a neutron, the electric charge being taken away by a positron. Some examples of such nuclei are carbon-11, nitrogen-13, and oxygen-15, which are radioactive forms of common elements in the body and can be used, along with positron emission, to trace bodily functions such as those in the brain. to use sugars that emit positrons. The positrons are immediately annihilated by the ubiquitous electrons in nearby atoms. We can tell where in space the annihilation took place, and hence where the sugar was located, simply by using special cameras to detect the gamma rays that come flying out.


Elementary Atom:
Although a neutron’s total charges add to zero, their motions produce swirling electric currents and magnetism, which can be sensed by watching how a neutron moves in a magnetic field.

Proton and neutron, are themselves made of two varieties of quark. Where the proton has one unit of positive charge, an up quark has ⅔ positive and a down has ⅓ negative. Two ups and one down then make a proton (⅔ + ⅔ −⅓ = 1); two downs and one up add to zero charge (⅔ −⅓ −⅓ = 0), which is a neutron.

Add to this pair a third type of quark known as ‘strange’, which has the same electrical charge as a down quark (−⅓) and is effectively identical in all respects except that it is about 20 per cent heavier.


Annihilation:
If the antiproton approaches the proton relatively slowly, it will be entrapped by the attraction of opposite charges and start to orbit around the proton much as an electron might do in a conventional atom.

Initially this orbit will be far away, but the antiproton will lose energy, dropping from outer orbits to inner ones, emitting gamma rays as it does so. The antiproton tumbles into a close-in orbit, and comes within the range of the strong force, which is irresistible for protons and antiprotons. within less than a billionth of a billionth of a second they are gone, leaving gamma rays and pions. the pions, short-lived constructs of a quark and an antiquark, self-destruct, turning into yet more gamma rays, or into electrons, positrons, and ghostly neutrinos, all of which carry away the energy from the annihilation.

Cage for Anit-Matter
Since antimatter will destroy any material object, it must be kept in a cage without material walls. The solution is to have a vacuum that is better than in outer space with magnetic and electric fields that confine the antiparticles, positrons, or antiprotons, as circulating beams. If the magnetic field is powerful enough, it can steer the electrons in tight circles, trapping them in these orbits where they are unable to cross to the far end of the tube. What Dehmelt did was to change the voltage so that current never flowed, but instead the electrons wandered around for ever in the magnetic field.

Nuttie-Nut:
- We live in a world of matter, but the vacuum is full of both ‘virtual’ antimatter and ‘virtual’ matter, virtual in the sense that it does not materialize (maybe that should read ‘anti-materialize’) but whose presence can be inferred by its effects on passing particles of matter.

- an antiparticle could be regarded as a particle that was travelling backwards in time.

- Although electrons are matter and antiprotons are antimatter, they are no danger to one another: electrons are destroyed by their antiparticle, the positron, while the antiproton is at risk only from protons or neutrons.

Neutrino:
Particles that have mass, which we now know includes the neutrino, can spin either left-or right-handed, and it is possible for interactions with other particles to switch them from one to the other. Whether these ghostly entities follow the ‘left-hand matter, right-hand antimatter’ rule, or whether a neutrino is ‘both’ matter and antimatter, in the sense that a neutrino and its antiparticle are not really distinct objects, is an open question.

Majoron - Monsterly Heavy Neutrino, that make Higg's Boson, and make matter more than anti-matter:
According to theory the majoron, which is a massive neutral fermion, could radiate energy in the form of a ‘Higgs Boson’ and turn into a neutrino or an antineutrino. what the majorons have contributed. Their deaths gave birth to an imbalance between neutrinos and antineutrinos; it was in the subsequent turmoil, as the myriad particles and antiparticles were hit by the asymmetric mix of neutrinos and antineutrinos, that an excess of quarks over antiquarks emerged.

Assymetry of the Universe and Physics Law:
1. Neutral kaon, written K0 is a Boson, made from a quark and an anti-quark.
2. A quark of the down flavour together with an antiquark of the strange variety form the K0. Interchanging matter and antimatter, so you have a strange quark and a down antiquark, produces the anti-version of the K0
3. A strange quark is more massive than a down quark but otherwise very much the same. As a result a strange quark can shed some energy and convert into a down quark; likewise an anti-strange one can convert into an antidown.
4. If matter and antimatter are symmetric, then the change from K0 to anti-K0 is as likely to happen as the reverse process.
5. If you create a beam that is a 50:50 mixture of K0 and its anti-twin, you can compare the mix at their deaths. If you find anything other than 50:50, it’s because either there is an asymmetry in the oscillation,
6. However, the long-lived one where the effect is biggest, the decay that leads to a positron being slightly more likely to happen than that giving an electron: out of every two-thousand examples, on the average 1,003 will give a positron and 997 give an electron.
7. In our world of matter, when the long-lived K decays into a pion and an electron or positron, it is the positron mode that is the most likely.

[Retrobot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easy to follow.
Lots of new information for someone with no prior knowledge in this field.
Concise.
I'd give an extra star if I could for the cover.

[Muhammad Haque · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very precise and gentle introduction into the realm of antimatter. It is one of those books, where science is not entirely killed for the sake of accessibility and the author, with a very engaging narrative has kept a very good balance between scientific concepts while keeping it simple (but not simpler!).
Not only that, beside introducing the reader with the concepts, history and related experiments of antimatter, the book will walkthrough the reader in debunking the myths and fictions concerning this matter (!) using knowledge described in earlier chapters. That's what I loved the most about this book, it teaches to think and use existing knowledge to differentiate facts from fiction and reveal truth about the nature.
This is an absolute recommendation for anyone interested in particle physics or simply want to know what's the matter with the antimatter!

[Logicwins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like how he approached the explanation of this book from a science and science fiction angle. Good way to grab my interest. I also had no idea what antimatter actually was and I probably still don't really get it, I understand it a little more. The most mind boggling thing I learned was that an atomic explosion spits out a couple % of the available energy while an anti-matter bomb would be 100% and no radiation issues. Also was cool how difficult and expensive it would be to actually make and store the stuff.

[Majd Sahmarany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book after The Void, for Frank Close, because i loved the author and his style..
I liked it, but i think my opinion is very subjective, because I love the subject..
I would recommend it to anyone who loves theoretical physics ...

[Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good comprehensive book on the basic principles of antimatter. Would recommend to anyone who is interested.

[Ocean G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although much of the detail and most of the explanations were over my head, it was good to learn more about Antimatter. I get the impression that a big part of the impetus for writing this book was as a response to everyone getting excited over Antimatter after Dan Brown's novel "Angels and Demons" (anyone remember that?). In fact, the last chapter is pretty much dedicated to debunking all of the "FACTS" from that book. Part of this seems directed at the US military, which seemed to be considering using Antimatter as a weapon, possibly after having read that book.

I think this book's explanation of the theory of relativity finally got through to me, at least in terms of how we can't travel faster than the speed of light:
"In Einstein’s theory of relativity the mass of a body gets larger and larger the faster it travels. As it approaches the speed of light, the mass grows extremely fast, making the object ever more resistant to acceleration. Eventually, as one tries to reach the speed of light, the mass becomes infinite. It is thus impossible to accelerate a massive object to the speed of light; the only things that travel at light speed are things with no mass, such as light itself! (p. 28)

It is also interesting to see how unique earth really is, in terms of all the perfect elements available in one place, as illustrated by this footnote (p. 115): "if you selected at random a volume of the universe that is millions of light years in diameter, atomic elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, iron, silver, and gold would be all but absent"

Regardless, every time I read about physics I seem to understand marginally more. Maybe after a couple hundred more books I'll get it. I do wonder how out of date this book is, however. Maybe a new edition is in order?


Interesting passage about Paul Dirac:
"During a lecture at the University of Toronto a member of the audience asked politely ‘I do not understand how you derived that formula on the board’. There was a long silence, and it was only after being prompted by the chairman to give an answer that Dirac responded ‘It was not a question; it was a statement’." (p.35)

The whole section "Don't shake hands with an Anti-alien" (p. 110) was fascinating

[Mangoo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Finished reading largely only because of my OCD (I should remind it is my right as a reader to decline attention and stop reading at any point, as Pennac wrote), this short book is an elementary account of the main events in the history of discovery of antimatter, its creation, both and mainly artificial and natural with the "big bang", its role in the presence of matter in the reality we see around us (and to a pretty big distance from here), and in the misconceptions that surround antimatter largely as a consequence of the success of Dan Brown's "Angels and demons" and the following announcements by the US military department and NASA of interest in antimatter technology (which date back to 2004; note the book was published in 2009). The initial pages dealing with Dirac (and the appendix on the "gammas") are interesting, and I could say this is a nice pamphlet for the purpose of mispelling fears in those (not few, at the time) that believed the perfect destruction weapon was at hand. Most of the arguments against that are, guess what, about the immense costs in time and energy (we would anyway at most what we put in) of producing reasonable quantities of antimatter, and even then the trouble of storing that amount of antimatter.

[Scott Ravede · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frank Close does a good job explaining the fundamentals of just what antimatter is, and also debunks some of the popular myths about this matter of antimatter. By the second half of the book, though, he starts delving into the weeds of particle physics and the Big Bang and then it starts to get more difficult to follow. Having a science degree myself, I was able to keep up for the most part, but I don’t think the average layman with no science knowledge would be able to, and will probably give up halfway through. But for anyone with a good grasp of physics already, this book will be a short read. You will also learn why antimatter matters, as it is actually put to use in medicine and technology today.

[Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

- When antimatter collide with matter, it release a tremendous amount of energy

- Antimatter is the "mirror" image of normal matter

- E=mc^2 essentially says that matters are energy trapped in matter form; in addition, for every matter there is an antimatter, just like the more you dig a hole, the more dirt there would be replaced

- For the longest time we believed there were only 3 elements that made up of an atom: proton, electron and neutron. However, through colliders we have since learnt even smaller particles exists

- Protons consists of 3 quarks

- There are endless things we do not know

[Taylor Ahlstrom · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beginner's guide to everything we know about antimatter and its place in the universe that is simple, clear, and easy to understand. Close is so good at explaining complex physics to the layman that everytime I found myself wondering, "well how exactly does that work?" The next paragraph started out by saying "you may be wondering how exactly that works..." followed by yet another accessible analogy.

For anyone curious about this most curious of non-substances (who doesn't want to go back to school), Antimatter is the best place to start.

[Shāhruq Sarfarāz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating overview by my favourite Particle Physics author, Frank Close.

The author has beautifully described the world of anti matter, the Dirac's equation which concludes the prediction of anti matter, the Tunguska event and the most amazing stuff - the rebuttal of the American Air Force's over excitement and transmission of invalid information on the production of anti matter weapons etc., in the last decade.

[Woolstar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of science, some I hadn't even thought about (electrons won't interact with anti-protons); but a lot of hand wringing about how popular fiction misconstrued what its capable of. Its amazing how we're still trying to figure basic mysteries out, and any basic research into containment is great news, even if the air-force has hopeless dreams of making a bomb out of it any time soon.

Good for the science, skip the soap box.

[Nico · Rating 5 out of 5]

This physics' book about antimatter was surprisingly a page turner. It is very well written to make it accessible for the most part. It provides an explanation of what atoms are made of, what antimatter is, and how we came to discover all this. I definitely recommend this for anyone interested in this subject who isn't a physicist.

[WiseB · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came across antimatter while reading various publications relating to particle physics, while getting an idea of what it is but never been able to have a comprehensive understanding of its totality. By reading Close's book that focus only on antimatter, it reveals to me the knowledge of such and definitely makes my future reading on the topic more interesting.

[John Poulain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whilst I found myself having to use prior knowledge of physics and occasionally looking up parts outside of the book I found it an interesting guide through antimatter as a concept. Partially written in response to Angels and Demons Antimatter Bomb idea the book discusses why that wouldn't really be an issue but what the opposite of matter really means for the world.

[Sreena · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Antimatter is a game-changer, a unique form of matter that could revolutionize energy production and space travel."

Antimatter is not merely a scientific exploration; it also delves into the human element behind the research. Close introduces us to the brilliant minds and groundbreaking discoveries that have shaped our understanding of antimatter.

[Michal Paszkiewicz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good popular science book on anti-matter that has everything you need to know to dispell the myths and understand what we can actually do with it. It is readable and clear, yet has many of the details that may help someone grow their interest in physics.

[Devesh Kumar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Energy as a weapon eemonstrated in Black Panther movie, but in practical it's a distant dream. If antimatter is like a shadow, it will became disappear with respect of matter than how could a vessel restore it?

[Martin Dolezal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zpočátku jsem si říkal, co mě to čeká (antihmotové zbraně, tunguský meteorit antihmotou, apod.), ale postupně se ukázalo, že to byla ta populární část na start, krok po kroku vysvětlená a zavržená, pak se šlo hezky vědecky a bylo to nenáročné příjemné shrnutí.

[Luke Mann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good book, primarily explaining the history and some misconceptions behind Antimatter. Scientific content is good for someone without formal scientific training. Overall, the book accomplishes it's goal in the way you would expect