The quantum kingdom and antimatter

As we can remember from some books and science fiction films such as Angels and demons or Star Trek where we were exposed to the existence of antimatter and that its main use is to generate a huge amount of energy to propel a ship or create a bomb but How far is this from reality ?, Well I could say that not much and that is that I will expose the principle and definition of antimatter and how is that something like this can exist.

Everything started in the 1930s with the British physicist Paul Dirac who tried to unify the two most important currents of modern physics such as spatial relativity and quantum mechanics. He formulated a mathematical equation that combined the principles of relativity of Einstein with the postulates of quantum physics by Niels Bohr is now called the Dirac equation.

But how special is this equation and why is it that it poses the existence of antimatter?

the Dirac equation

Well the fact is simple and that is to solve the system we are raised two unknowns that one of the results that there are electrons with positive charge known as positrons, but how is this possible? good and it is that the positron is the mirror image of the electron, equal mass and with charge of opposite sign. During his speech, at the Nobel Prize ceremony, Dirac came to predict that there were stars made of antimatter in the universe (something quite fascinating).

In 1932, when the American physicist Carl Anderson was investigating the behavior of the Cosmic Rays, he discovered by chance antimatter. He observed and photographed for the first time in the "fog chamber" the positron. The discovery also earned him the Nobel Prize in 1936.

But is it possible to create antimatter?

The antiprotons were produced for the first time in; the particle accelerator of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, by Emilio Gino Segré and Owen Chamberlain in 1955, physicists at the University of California at Berkeley. The process consisted in bombarding a sheet of copper with high-energy protons. Because of this discovery, Segré and Owen were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1959, but there is no end to it all. The European Nuclear Research Center (CERN), located in Zurich, is home to the world's largest particle accelerator. LHC. In this particle accelerator, with a diameter of 26.6 km in circumference, it is possible to produce antimatter. The protons, once accelerated to 99.99% of the speed of light, are made to collide with each other or against a metal sheet. After the collision, the enormous kinetic energy of these particles is partially converted into antiparticles and gamma rays according to the Einstein equation, E = mc2 thus accommodating the confirmation of Einstein's theory of relativity that predicted the reversibility between matter and energy .

this process generates a huge amount of energy which could cover the energy needs of the planet and with a tiny amount of matter since about 0.5g of antimatter have approximately an amount of energy stored approximately to a 20 kiloton bomb but it is also a very expensive process currently has calculated that a nanogram of antihydrogen has a cost of 200 million euros.

medical applications

Doctors know that the tissues of the human body invaded by cancer have a high glucose consumption. It was discovered that fluorine-18 is a positron-emitting radioisotope and that, in addition, it binds easily to glucose. When the positron of fluorine-18 encounters an electron of glucose, both are destroyed and generate gamma rays that can be detected by a suitable medical instrument. In this way, in real time, it is possible to see an image of the brain's brain mass and thus identify, locate and quantify the glucose consumption by the different cells of that area of the organism. The PET (Positron Emission Tomography), is currently an instrument that, combined with the TAC (computerized axial tomography), is of great importance for the diagnosis of cancer, especially in the central nervous system. Where other types of treatments would be very invasive or would make it difficult to detect them.

Different cuts of a brain seen with a positron emission tomography.

Finally this is a article was made to inform the community, leave your comments and what you think about how this technology could be used.