Protons and neutrons are composed of smaller particles, quarks and gluons. The intriguing aspect of matter is its conceptual doppelgänger - antimatter. Essentially, every subatomic particle has a corresponding antiparticle, hovering on the edge between matter and antimatter.
Antimatter particles can coalesce to form antiatoms, which theoretically, could create antimatter regions within the universe. Despite no observations of such regions, scientists have produced plentiful antiparticles in particle accelerators, even creating anti-elements and antiatoms. Our understanding of antimatter is further enhanced by antiparticles generated by cosmic ray collisions and certain radioactive phenomena.
Antimatter may seem far removed from our daily existence, yet it is closer than you think. Bananas, surprisingly, produce antimatter by releasing a positron, an antimatter equivalent of an electron, approximately every 75 minutes.
Neutrinos, nearly massless and uncharged particles that rarely interact with matter, could potentially be their own antiparticles. These Majorana particles, a speculative class of particles, are distinguished by their opposite charges.
Groundbreaking discoveries at Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider have revealed the antimatter twin of helium, paving the way for future antimatter research. The Department of Energy has long supported such studies, with the Office of Nuclear Physics and High Energy Physics spearheading the quest to understand the asymmetry between matter and antimatter.
Antimatter, in essence, is a type of matter composed of antiparticles, the polar opposites of ordinary matter particles. An encounter between a matter particle and its antiparticle results in their mutual annihilation, emitting energy as gamma radiation. This symmetrically balanced process, known as matter-antimatter annihilation, has found useful applications such as in positron emission tomography (PET) scans
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