What do you get when you combine the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics? No joke here—just a revolutionary concept coined by Nobel Prize winner P.A.M. Dirac after he discovered a strange disparity in an equation.
What exactly was Dirac’s equation? Well, in short, it was a vast expansion of Einstein’s theory of relativity combined with quantum mechanics in a manner that had never been done before mathematically. Dirac found that this equation allowed for the existence of particles as we know them, as well as oppositely charged particles with magnetic moments opposite those of the corresponding particles of matter. He called these oppositely charged particles antiparticles, or antimatter.
Antimatter is subdivided in the same manner as matter, both having electrical charges and magnetic moments. However, antiparticles’ electrical charges and magnetic moments are the opposite of particles’. For example, an electron is a particle of matter, and a positron is its antimatter twin. An electron has a negative charge, and a positron has a positive one. A positron and an electron also exhibit opposite magnetic moments. While scientists still aren’t sure how antimatter behaves, we do know that when it comes into contact with matter, both are annihilated in a burst of light and energy. That means that there is much more matter than antimatter, because if there were equal amounts, the universe would disappear in an explosion of light. According to conservation laws, the big bang should have created equal parts matter and antimatter. So where are all the antiparticles?
That has been, and will most likely remain, the biggest mystery of particle physics. It is a concept called baryon asymmetry, and it has been tackled by physicists across the world since the discovery of antimatter. But that’s not to say there’s no antimatter on Earth. There is. It just isn’t enough to be noticeable. In fact, a banana produces antimatter at a rate of one positron every 75 minutes—a level far below any detectability threshold, but a level nonetheless.