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The first of these is antimatter, predicted by the British theoretical physicist Dirac in 1928 when he was developing an equation to describe the behaviour of the electron.
Dirac was a very shy man; you see it in his demeanour as he gives a lecture. However the respect in which he is held is shown by his plaque in Westminster Abbey, placed there in 1995, which is reputedly the only equation in the Abbey.
For Dirac the equation was obvious; however he could only find a solution to it describing the behaviour of the electron if there was also another solution which seemed to describe something with negative energy. This solution he eventually ascribed to the positron, the antiparticle of the electron.
The first of these is antimatter, predicted by the British theoretical physicist Dirac in 1928 when he was developing an equation to describe the behaviour of the electron.
Dirac was a very shy man; you see it in his demeanour as he gives a lecture. However the respect in which he is held is shown by his plaque in Westminster Abbey, placed there in 1995, which is reputedly the only equation in the Abbey.
For Dirac the equation was obvious; however he could only find a solution to it describing the behaviour of the electron if there was also another solution which seemed to describe something with negative energy. This solution he eventually ascribed to the positron, the antiparticle of the electron.
The first of these is antimatter, predicted by the British theoretical physicist Dirac in 1928 when he was developing an equation to describe the behaviour of the electron. Dirac was a very shy man; you see it in his demeanour as he gives a lecture. However the respect in which he is held is shown by his plaque in Westminster Abbey, placed there in 1995, which is reputedly the only equation in the Abbey. For Dirac the equation was obvious; however he could only find a solution to it describing the behaviour of the electron if there was also another solution which seemed to describe something with negative energy. This solution he eventually ascribed to the positron, the antiparticle of the electron.
The simplest way to describe antimatter is in terms of its behaviour - when particle and antiparticle meet they annihilate and their mass is turned into energy in the form of g-rays, also called photons.
This process is governed by the second and last equation you will see this evening, and surely known to the whole audience - Einstein’s famous equation E=mc2.
Not only is this true for electrons and positrons, it also occurs for quarks and anti-quarks and more complicated objects like protons and anti-protons. You would also be in trouble if you met your anti-you.
However this possibility is still someway off; it was not until 1996 that anti-hydrogen, the simplest anti-atom was produced.