Key Facts about Antimatter

July 17, 2025

Recently, an international collaboration of scientists based in Europe reported that they had, for the first time, observed that the matter and antimatter versions of a type of subatomic particle called a baryon decay at different rates.

About Antimatter:

  • Antimatter is the same as ordinary matter except that it has the opposite electric charge.
  • The antimatter particles corresponding to electrons, protons, and neutrons are called positrons (e+), antiprotons (p), and antineutrons (n); collectively they are referred to as antiparticles.
  • The electrical properties of antimatter being opposite to those of ordinary matter, the positron has a positive charge and the antiproton a negative charge; the antineutron, though electrically neutral, has a magnetic moment opposite in sign to that of the neutron.
  • Matter and antimatter cannot coexist at close range for more than a small fraction of a second because they collide with and annihilate each other, releasing large quantities of energy in the form of gamma rays or elementary particles.
  • Antimatter was created along with matter after the Big Bang. But antimatter is rare in today's universe.
  • Humans have created antimatter particles using ultra-high-speed collisions at huge particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider, which is located outside Geneva and operated by CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research).

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