Message-Id: <v01540b04b05a6a27c5bc@[12.64.1.23]>
To: pinhole@exploratorium.edu
From: kstreet@worldnet.att.net (Karen Street)
Subject: Re: Matter in a vacuum
Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 16:54:35 +0000
Suzy,
Matter can be virtual: appear and disappear before it can be detected. It
always appears as a matter/antimatter pair, and it comes from the energy
stored in space (the Higg's field--the mass of a particle depends on how
strongly the particle interacts with the Higg's field, according to one
theory).
If it appears near a very large mass, one piece may be pulled very strongly
toward the mass, and the other may go hurtling in the other direction. This
is why we see antimatter near the center of our galaxy and other galaxies.
How do we "see" antimatter?
Most of the time, it is electron/antielectron pairs that are produced, as
proton/antiproton or neutron/antineutron pairs are 2000 x as massive. When
the escaping particle is an antielectron, it will soon encounter an
electron, and they will annihilate, producing two 511 keV photons, pieces
of light.
By Heisenberg, delta E x delta t > h/2 pi. For a very short period of time,
delta E (delta mass) can be enormous. This happens constantly.
But that doesn't mean there is friction or air resistance, just that there
is no perfect vacuum.
Another example: physicists were studying beam loss for Au+56, gold with 56
electrons missing. The main loss did not occur, as they first thought, from
gold running into stray hydrogen and helium atoms in the "vacuum" and
having an extra electron knocked off. It occurred because the electric
field is so strong when there are many Au+56, that electron/antielectron
pairs formed out of the energy of the electric field. The electron combined
with the Au+56 to make Au+55, and the antielectron disappeared into the
wall. The Au+55 moved in a different circle, and was lost to the beam.
Karen Street