Posted on 05/09/2019 4:33:28 PM PDT by ETL
For the first time, researchers have performed a version of the famous double-slit experiment with antimatter particles.
The double-slit experiment demonstrates one of the fundamental tenets of quantum physics: that pointlike particles are also waves.
In the standard version of the experiment, particles travel through a pair of slits in a solid barrier.
On a screen on the other side, an interference pattern typical of waves appears.
Crests and troughs emerging from each slit reinforce each other or cancel each other out as they overlap, creating alternating bands of high and low particle density on the screen.
This kind of experiment has revealed the wave-particle duality of photons, electrons, atoms and even large molecules (SN: 11/20/10, p. 20).
But it’s very difficult to generate a strong, uniform beam of antiparticles to do the experiment with antimatter.
Now, a new double-slit–style experiment, reported online May 3 in Science Advances, has confirmed the wavelike nature of the electron’s antimatter counterpart: the positron.
The researchers designed a device in which positrons, generated through the radioactive decay of the isotope sodium-22, travel through two successive rows of vertical rods less than a micrometer thick.
The gaps between these rods, each a few hundred nanometers across, work like the slits in the classic double-slit experiment.
The positron waves propagate out to a nuclear emulsion detector, where the antiparticles alter the chemical structure of silver bromide crystals. ..."
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
Below, some additional graphics I found elsewhere online...
Dr Quantum - Double Slit Experiment
604,584 views
You are only coming through in waves.
Ye canna ney mix matter ana anti-matter cap’n.
Matter + Anti-Matter = Annihilation
In particle physics, annihilation is the process that occurs when a subatomic particle collides with its respective antiparticle to produce other particles, such as an electron colliding with a positron to produce two photons.[1]
The total energy and momentum of the initial pair are conserved in the process and distributed among a set of other particles in the final state.
Antiparticles have exactly opposite additive quantum numbers from particles, so the sums of all quantum numbers of such an original pair are zero.
Hence, any set of particles may be produced whose total quantum numbers are also zero as long as conservation of energy and conservation of momentum are obeyed.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilation
Scientists claim that antimatter is the costliest material to make.[68] In 2006, Gerald Smith estimated $250 million could produce 10 milligrams of positrons[69] (equivalent to $25 billion per gram); in 1999, NASA gave a figure of $62.5 trillion per gram of antihydrogen.[68]
Antimatter’s super expensive, wow! This explains why God made us out of the cheap stuff
“estimated $250 million could produce 10 milligrams of positrons[69] (equivalent to $25 billion per gram)”
Lol! Wow.
Lol!
It’s two mints in one!
Your lips move, but I can’t hear what they say.
There may be entire galaxies made of anti-matter.
Don’t go to one, even if you get a free ticket.
A positron is equivalent to an electron traveling backwards in time, so they got the expected result.
Great post.
I had no idea that atoms and molecules demonstrate wave behavior.
I thought only discrete particles like photons and electrons did that.
Don’t be so particular.
Einstein’s ‘spooky action at a distance’ spotted in objects almost big enough to see
By Gabriel Popkin
Apr 25, 2018
Where did you read or hear that?
For later
But does the antimatter act differently when observed, as in the double slit experiment?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.