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westurner12/09/20246 repliesview on HN

Does this actually prove that antimatter necessarily exists?

Does this prove that antimatter is necessary for theories of gravity to concur with other observations?

Do the observed properties of antimatter particles correspond with antimatter as the or a necessary nonuniform correction factor to theories of gravity?


Replies

gus_massa12/09/2024

My guess is that you are confusing "antimatter" and "dark matter".

If you want some antimmater, you can go to your nearby physics suply store and buy some radioactive material that produce positrons. It's quite easy. (Radioactive material may be dangerous. Don't fool with that!) If you want antiprotons or antihydrogen, you need a huge particle acelerator. They make plenty of antiprotons in the CERN, to make colisions. They are very difficult to store, so they survive a very short time on Earth.

Dark matter is very different. We have some experimental resuls that don't match the current physics theories. The current best guess is that there is some matter that we can't see for some reason. Nobody is sure what it is. Perhaps it's made of very dark big objects or perhaps it's made of tiny particles that don't interact with light. (I'm not sure the current favorite version in the area.) Anyway, some people don't like "dark matter" and prefer to change the theories, but the proposed new theories also don't match the experimental results.

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dragonwriter12/09/2024

> Does this actually prove that antimatter necessarily exists?

Antimatter definitely exists, it is detectable, and used; e.g, PET scans use positrons (anti-electrons), and there have been experiments (only in animal models last I knew) with anti-proton radiotherapy for cancers.

This is the first evidence of a particular configuration of antimatter, not the first evidence of antimatter.

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ranger20712/09/2024

Antimatter has been used in medical PET (positron emission tomography) scans since the 60s

OscarCunningham12/09/2024

You're confusing antimatter with dark matter.

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pvg12/09/2024

Antimatter detection is not the new thing here, being nearly a century old:

https://timeline.web.cern.ch/carl-anderson-discovers-positro...