What a Positron Is... And What Happens When It Meets an Electron

#Positron #Antimatter #Physics Right now, your body is making antimatter. A few thousand times a day, a speck of mirror matter flashes into existence... and dies in a burst of gamma light. Its name is the positron. It is the electron's twin, with one thing flipped. When the two touch, both vanish. Every bit of their mass becomes pure energy, the most efficient reaction in the known universe. Tonight we follow that collision. From a banana on your counter... to thunderstorms firing antimatter into space... to a strange glow at the heart of our galaxy that remains a mystery... to giant stars torn apart by these tiny particles. And at the end waits the biggest question of all. Why is there anything left? If you enjoy the journey, tap like and subscribe, so you can come along for the next one. Hold on tight. We begin. Sources: A) Symmetry Magazine (2009) — Antimatter from bananas B) AGU (2011) — Spacecraft catches thunderstorms hurling antimatter into space C) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2011) — Positron annihilation spectrum from the Galactic Centre region observed by SPI/INTEGRAL revisited D) Nature (2007) — The production of molecular positronium E) Physics World (2024) — Matter–antimatter gas of positronium is laser cooled F) Nature (2023) — Antimatter falls down, not up: CERN experiment confirms theory G) Brookhaven National Laboratory (2021) — Collisions of light produce matter/antimatter from pure energy H) Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (2021) — Cosmic-ray positrons strongly constrain leptophilic dark matter I) Nature Communications (2024) — Laboratory realization of relativistic pair-plasma beams J) Astronomy & Astrophysics (2024) — 1100 days in the life of the supernova 2018ibb K) Monash University (2023) — Evidence for a pair-instability supernova from a very massive first star #science #physics #antimatter #space #universe #quantum #cosmos #documentary