At present the only way we can produce anti-matter is through high powered colli
ID: 1372663 • Letter: A
Question
At present the only way we can produce anti-matter is through high powered collisions. New matter is created from the energy produced in these collisions and some of them are anti-matter particles such as positrons, anti-protons etc.
My question is, normal matter and anti-matter are so similar. They both appear to react to the fundamental forces in the same way. Is it conceivable that we could find a way of "switching" matter to become "anti-matter" through some low energy technique? E.g. find a way to flick a few "quantum switches" and voila your proton is now an anti-proton, ready for annihilation and limitless energy for humanity!
Would we be breaking a great deal of the fundamental laws of physics if this was found to be possible (i.e. should I give up now)?
Explanation / Answer
Short answer: Give up now. Conservation of baryon number, lepton number, strangeness, charm, bottomness, and most importantly charge are making your job hard.
Long answer: I'm ignoring charge conservation issues from time to time; as its no fun if you take that into account
Well, not baryons or leptons. And we have conservation of charge in the way as well.
Baryons
We have conservation of baryon number B=13(number of quarks-number of antiquarks), which has opposite values for particle-antiparticle pairs. The only way to convert a baryon to its antibaryon would be to bombard it with a different antibaryon with (negative) twice the baryon number (And twice the negative charge as well). And that would require energy (to create the antibaryon).
Leptons
For leptons, we have conservation of lepton numbers Le,L?,L?. I doubt any reaction exists where a lepton becomes an antilepton, as leptons can only have lepton number
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