How to Die in Space: A Journey Through Dangerous Astrophysical Phenomena

by Paul Sutter

That decay process, from titanium to scandium to calcium, also releases an abundance of positrons.14 For those not in the know, a positron is a kind of antimatter. And if that hasn’t set off alarm bells yet, it should. Antimatter is just like normal matter, which the exact same properties except for one crucial difference: it has opposite charge. So a positron has the exact same mass and spin as an electron, but is positively charged. That’s cute. What’s not so cute is that when matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate each other, converting all of their mass into pure energy. Radiation. It’s the ultimate expression of Einstein’s E=mc2, which tells us how much energy is in every bit of mass. In a matter-antimatter meetup, 100 percent of that juicy m is converted into raw, terrible E. To give you a sense of just how senseless this is, two pounds of antimatter, when merely placed in contact with two pounds of normal matter in the worst mashup in history, would release the same amount of energy as all the weapons used throughout the entirety of World War II (including the nuclear bombs). Ten times over.