Name: Abhishek.

Sharma
Class: 12 Science
th

Roll number: 1
Subject: Physics Investigatory Project
Topic: Antimatter
School: Jindal Vidya Mandir, Salav

TEACHER’S REMARK:
__________________
 This is to certify that Abhishek Sharma of
Class XII Science has satisfactorily completed
the project on “antimatter” under the
guidance of Mr. Bipin Chaube during the
session 2019-2020.

Student’s Sign Examiner’s Sign

__________________________________ ___________________________________
 I’d like to express my greatest gratitude to the people
who have helped and supported me throughout my
project. I’m grateful to Sir. Mr. Bipin Chaube for his
continuous support for the project, from initial advice
and encouragement to this day.
Special thanks of mine goes to my colleague who helped
me in completing the project by giving interesting ideas,
thoughts and made this project easy and accurate.
I wish to thanks my parents for their undivided support
and interest who inspired me and encouraged me to go
my own way, without which I would be unable to
complete my project. At last but not the least I want to
thanks my friends who appreciated me for my work and
motivated me and finally to God who made all the
things possible…..
 Research Topic:
Antimatter

Lab I/C Under the Guidance of

_Ravi_ _Bipin Chaube_
 Certificate
 Acknowledgement
 Introduction
 Prediction and Nobel Prize
 Antiparticles
 Where is it?
 Notation
 Preservation
 Cost
 Uses
a) Medical
b) Fuel
c) Weapon
 Bibliography
Antimatter is the opposite of normal matter. More
specifically, the sub-atomic particles of antimatter
have properties opposite those of normal matter.
The electrical charge of those particles is reversed.
Antimatter was created along with matter after the
Big Bang, but antimatter is rare in today's
universe, and scientists aren't sure why.
To better understand antimatter, one needs to
know more about matter. Matter is made up of
atoms, which are the basic units of chemical
elements such as hydrogen, helium or oxygen. Each
element has a certain number of atoms: Hydrogen
has one atom; helium has two atoms; and so on.
The universe of an atom is complex, as it is full of
exotic particles with properties of spin and
"flavor" that physicists are only just beginning to
understand. From a simple perspective, however,
atoms have particles that are known as electrons,
protons and neutrons inside of them.
 Prediction and Nobel Prize-

Antimatter was first predicted in 1928 by

English physicist Paul Dirac, who New
Scientist magazine called "the greatest
British theorist since Sir Isaac Newton."
Dirac put together Einstein's special
relativity equation (which says light is the
fastest-moving thing in the universe) and
quantum mechanics (which describes
what happens in an atom), according to
the magazine. He discovered the
equation worked for electrons with
negative charge or with positive charges.
While Dirac was at first hesitant about
sharing his findings, he eventually
embraced them and said that every
particle in the universe would have a
mirror image. American physicist Carl D.
Anderson discovered positrons in 1932.
Dirac received a Nobel Prize in Physics in
1933 and Anderson got the prize in 1936.

Antiparticles:
 In the heart of an atom, called the nucleus,
are protons (which have a positive electrical
charge) and neutrons (which have a neutral
charge). Electrons, which generally have a
negative charge, occupy orbits around the
nucleus. The orbits can change depending on
how "excited" the electrons are (meaning
how much energy they have.)
In the case of antimatter, the electrical charge
is reversed relative to matter, according to
 NASA. Anti-electrons (called positrons)
behave like electrons but have a positive
charge. Antiprotons, as the name implies, are
protons with a negative charge.
These antimatter particles (which are called
"antiparticles") have been generated and
studied at huge particle accelerators such as
the Large Hadron Collider operated by CERN
(the European Organization for Nuclear
Research), NASA stated.
"Antimatter is NOT antigravity," NASA added.
"Although it has not been experimentally
confirmed, existing theory predicts that
antimatter behaves the same to gravity as
does normal matter."

Where is it?
Antimatter particles are created in ultra
high-speed collisions. In the first
moments after the Big Bang, only energy
existed. As the universe cooled and
expanded, particles of both matter and
antimatter were produced in equal
amounts. Why matter came to dominate
is a question that scientists have yet to
discover.
One theory suggests that more normal
matter was created than antimatter in
the beginning, so that even after mutual
annihilation there was enough normal
matter left to form stars, galaxies and us.
 Notation-
One way to denote an antiparticle is by
adding a bar over the particle's symbol.
For example, the proton and antiproton
are denoted as p and , respectively. The
p

same rule applies if one were to address

a particle by its constituent components.
A proton is made up of uud quarks, so an
antiproton must therefore be formed
from  antiquarks. Another convention is
uud

to distinguish particles by their electric

charge. Thus, the electron and positron
are denoted simply
− +
as e  and e  respectively. However, to
prevent confusion, the two conventions
are never mixed.
 Preservation-

Antimatter cannot be stored in a container

made of ordinary matter because
antimatter reacts with any matter it
touches, annihilating itself and an equal
amount of the container. Antimatter in the
form of charged particles can be contained
by a combination
of electric and magnetic fields, in a device
called a Penning trap. This device cannot,
however, contain antimatter that consists
of uncharged particles, for which atomic
traps are used. In particular, such a trap
may use the dipole moment
(electric or magnetic) of the trapped
particles. At high vacuum, the matter or
antimatter particles can be trapped and
cooled with slightly off-resonant laser
radiation using a magneto-optical
trap or magnetic trap. Small particles can
also be suspended with optical tweezers,
using a highly focused laser beam.
In 2011, CERN scientists were able to
preserve antihydrogen for approximately
17 minutes. A proposal was made in 2018,
to develop containment technology
advanced enough to contain a billion anti-
protons in a portable device to be driven
to another lab for further experimentation.

Cost-
Scientists claim that antimatter is the costliest
material to make. In 2006, Gerald Smith
estimated $250 million could produce 10
milligrams of positrons (equivalent to $25
billion per gram); in 1999, NASA gave a figure
of $62.5 trillion per gram of
antihydrogen. This is because production is
difficult (only very few antiprotons are
produced in reactions in particle accelerators)
and because there is higher demand for other
uses of particle accelerators. According to
CERN, it has cost a few hundred million Swiss
francs to produce about 1 billionth of a gram
(the amount used so far for
particle/antiparticle collisions). In
comparison, to produce the first atomic
weapon, the cost of the Manhattan
Project was estimated at $23 billion with
inflation during 2007.
Several studies funded by the NASA Institute
for Advanced Concepts are exploring whether
it might be possible to use magnetic scoops to
collect the antimatter that occurs naturally in
the Van Allen belt of the Earth, and
ultimately, the belts of gas giants, like Jupiter,
hopefully at a lower cost per gram.

Uses-
a) Medical-
Matter–antimatter reactions have practical
applications in medical imaging, such
as positron emission tomography (PET). In
positive beta decay, a nuclide loses surplus
positive charge by emitting a positron (in the
same event, a proton becomes a neutron, and
a neutrino is also emitted). Nuclides with
surplus positive charge are easily made in
a cyclotron and are widely generated for
medical use. Antiprotons have also been shown
within laboratory experiments to have the
potential to treat certain cancers, in a similar
method currently used for ion (proton) therapy.

b) Fuel-

Isolated and stored anti-matter could be used

as a fuel for interplanetary or interstellar
travel as part of an antimatter catalyzed
nuclear pulse propulsion or other antimatter
rocketry, such as the redshift rocket. Since the
energy density of antimatter is higher than
that of conventional fuels, an antimatter-
fueled spacecraft would have a higher thrust-
to-weight ratio than a conventional
spacecraft.
If matter–antimatter collisions resulted only
in photon emission, the entire rest mass of
the particles would be converted to kinetic
energy. The energy per unit mass (9×1016 J/kg)
is about 10 orders of magnitude greater
than chemical energies, and about 3 orders of
magnitude greater than the nuclear potential
energy that can be liberated, today,
using nuclear fission (about 200 MeV per
fission reaction or 8×1013 J/kg), and about 2
orders of magnitude greater than the best
possible results expected
from fusion (about 6.3×1014 J/kg for
the proton–proton chain). The reaction
of 1 kg of antimatter with 1 kg of matter
would produce 1.8×1017 J (180 petajoules) of
energy (by the mass–energy
equivalence formula, E=mc2), or the rough
equivalent of 43 megatons of TNT – slightly
less than the yield of the 27,000 kg Tsar
Bomba, the largest thermonuclear
weapon ever detonated.
Not all of that energy can be utilized by any
realistic propulsion technology because of the
nature of the annihilation products. While
electron–positron reactions result in gamma
ray photons, these are difficult to direct and
use for thrust. In reactions between protons
and antiprotons, their energy is converted
largely into relativistic neutral and
charged pions. The neutral pions decay almost
immediately (with a lifetime of
85 attoseconds) into high-energy photons, but
the charged pions decay more slowly (with a
lifetime of 26 nanoseconds) and can
be deflected magnetically to produce thrust.
Charged pions ultimately decay into a
combination of neutrinos (carrying about 22%
of the energy of the charged pions) and
unstable charged muons (carrying about 78%
of the charged pion energy), with the muons
then decaying into a combination of
electrons, positrons and neutrinos (cf. muon
decay; the neutrinos from this decay carry
about 2/3 of the energy of the muons,
meaning that from the original charged pions,
the total fraction of their energy converted to
neutrinos by one route or another would be
about 0.22 + (2/3)⋅0.78=0.74).

c) Weapons-
 Antimatter has been considered as a trigger
mechanism for nuclear weapons. A major
obstacle is the difficulty of producing
antimatter in large enough quantities, and
there is no evidence that it will ever be
feasible. However, the U.S. Air Force funded
studies of the physics of antimatter in
the Cold War, and began considering its
possible use in weapons, not just as a trigger,
but as the explosive itself.
 Internet:

o www.wikipedia.co.in
o www.google.co.in
o www.icbse.com

Books:
Comprehensive Practical Chemistry