Mars Landing

[JesusFreak]

If space is made up of nothing, then how can it be?

[Jedd]

Basicly it's an atom with positively charged electrons and negatively charged protons (contrary to all your chem classes). When collided with a normal atom, it not only destroys it (contrary to the rule of conservation of mass) but also releases a WhOLE bunch of energy. So far, however, we have only had successful tests by putting in more energy than came out. This testing is being done at Lawrence Livermore Lab, about 10 miles down the road from me (road being the freeway). It's a major issue in modern physics, which is the unit I'm currently taking at school right now.

[JesusFreak]

jedd says it is nothing

also hwo do you reverse them?

[Jedd]

Do you mean change the charges? I have absolutely no idea. I'll ask my physics teacher tommorow, because now I want to know.

[JesusFreak]

if they change charges, won't they need to loose matter/gain matter to become stable, and in the process, won't they become what they were not in the first place, but no longer the same as when they started, if you get my drift

[Jedd]

I'm havin a hard time with your drift, but I'll try to answer that. I don't think matter loses any mass when it becomes antimatter. And antimatter itelf is not "nothing," it really is something. I know that in order to store it and create it they suspend it in mid-air, either by shining lasers from every direction or with magnets. I don't think I understand what you're asking, but hopefully that makes sense.

[shadowing]

Huh? O.K. summary of all this?

[Jedd]

Haha. Sorry im not going to summarize the whole topic for you. Read back.

[Arcane Wizard]

Antimatter does not have to be an atom with negative positrons/positive electrons, which are antimatter themselves.

[62 52 53 53]

and if antimater didn't have mass, no energy would be released

[DarkerLine]

[Jedd]

Both those posts are correct. Hopefully people understand now. I asked my teacher how to make antimatter, and this is the basic idea, which I think Arcane mentioned:

Atoms, as we all know, are made of protons, nuetrons, and electrons. These parts are all made up of even smaller parts called quarks. Each quark has a charge. When you combine a bunch of quarks, you get a charge equal to 1, 0, or -1. For example, look at a proton (+1 charge) with 3 quarks (real protons have many more):

+.2
-.7
+1.5

When added, the proton's charge is +1. Now go get a whole bunch more protons with different quarks, and make a proton with a charge on -1. Woohoo! We just made an antimatter proton! That's the idea. We collide them with normal matter, the matter dissapears, and we get energy! Which, like Arcane said, is E=mc² (thanks to good ol' Al).

[Jedd]

[DarkerLine]

[JesusFreak]

but are these anit-matter particles unstable, and won't they revert back to their original form very quickly?

[Jedd]

They are not unstable. They are just very difficult to make. You would have to force them, actually, to go back to their original state.

btw I barely know anything about neutrinos, please explain.

[Arcane Wizard]

Neutrinos are particles like electrons, but don't carry any electric charge. This way they can pass through matter without being affected by it. I think it was only recently proved that neutrinos could be mass-less (whatever you call it in enlish) but those that do have mass are of course affecte by gravity.

I think there where 3 or 4 kinds of neutrinos, not sure though.

[DarkerLine]

You can also think of neutrinos as waves.

[Jedd]

These sounds a lot like electrons, which can be thought of as mass or waves.

[DarkerLine]

Not really. Electrons actually have a mass.