Question:
What is anti-matter? Is it the opposite of matter
in the sense that it has a 2> force insted of a gravitational
force, and does time go slower in close
proximity to it?
Replies:
Yours is a complicated question that I can best
answer with an example.
A positron is anti-matter for an electron. Try looking up positron in
an encyclopedia, and take it from there.
We believe that anti-matter and matter behave the same way with gravity,
On the surface of the earth both matter and anti-matter fall toward the
center of the earth. This belief is currently being tested experimentally.
I believe that one of the experiments is being done at Fermilab.
Jack L. Uretsky
One way of viewing antimatter is as matter going backwards
in time. However, that really only works on a microscopic
scale (a microscopic piece of matter which could be thought of
as annihilating with a piece of antimatter could also be thought
of as switching directions in time, with the same effects).
Macroscopically antimatter is expected to behave exactly the
same as matter (gravity works the same, and the mass of a piece
of antimatter is always exactly the same as the mass of its
corresponding piece of matter) except that electrical things will
all be backwards, since antimatter has opposite electrical charges
from matter.
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