What Is Antimatter?

"One matter is the kind we see here on earth, making up rocks, trees, people. The other is it's inverse--identical to matter in all respects except that the charges of its particles are reversed." (Brown 75).
This is how Dan Brown's sexy female physicist character explains antimatter to the ignorant art historian Robert Langdon, and indeed, how Brown explains it to the readers. The important thing to remember is that it is not just the atoms that are oppositely charged, but the actual particles. Each antimatter atom comprises the exact same particles as regular matter, but these particles have the reverse charge (Kaku 2008). For example, there are antimatter electrons, called positrons, that "orbit" the nucleus in the exact same way and number as do our electrons. Instead of protons in the nucleus, antimatter has anti-protons. The number of electrons and protons, or positrons and anti-protons, depends on the element, or anti-element.

Theoretically it is possible to not only have anti-atoms, but also anti-molecules, anti-objects, anti-organisms, anti-people, anti-Earth, anti-universes. Antimatter doesn't naturally exist on Earth, which is a good thing. When antimatter and matter come in contact, they completely cancel each other out in an explosion that converts 100% of their combined mass into energy. This explosive contact is the problem Brown's characters have to face as they race the clock and the bad guys.

Go to The possibilities and limitations of antimatter.

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