Today in my Methods and Applications of Atomic Physics class, we discussed antiparticles and CPT symmetry conservation (Charge conjugation, Parity and Time reversal). The CPT thing is not what I'd like to discuss.
I know that having a particle interact with its antiparticle results in mutual annihilation accompanied by a release of energy. I asked my professor what the possibilities are for gaining energy for free by using our available energy to create an antiproton that would then collide with a proton that we didn't have to work to get. In case that made no sense this is what I meant: (No energy expended proton source) + (some energy expended antiproton source) = More energy than we put in coming back. He said that it takes a crap-ton (rough estimate) of energy to make antiparticles currently. Also, the number of antiparticles the world has thus far created, although numbering in the millions (if not billions), would hardly heat a cup of water if allowed to annihilate. Drat.
My second question was a little more abstract. I began with making sure I understood the matter-antimatter combination. An antiproton will only annihilate with a proton, a positron will only annihilate with an electron, and so forth, right? He didn't sound so sure but I asked my next question anyway. What would happen if you could put an antiproton with a regular neutron? A normal proton and neutron form the nucleus of deuterium also know as heavy hydrogen. 45 years ago we had already made antideuterium (antiproton with antineutron), but I want to know what would happen if you could mix different matter and antimatter particles. He said he did not know but he guessed it would be bad (his words!).
I really don't know what the point of such a particle would be, but I suppose that since the antiproton is made up of antiquarks the annihilation would come from the quarks messing with each other. Just wanted to share those thoughts. Does anybody know anything about this? Has it been done?
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