Creating Anti matter (v1.0)

Antimatter are theoretical counterparts of normal matter. The modern theory of antimatter began in 1928, with a paper by Paul Dirac. Dirac realized that his relativistic version of the Schrödinger wave equation for electrons predicted the possibility of antielectrons. These were discovered by Carl D. Anderson in 1932 and named positrons from "positive electron". On October 19, 1955, the discovery of the antiproton was announced. The culmination of a decades-long hunt for the particle, the discovery won its discoverers Emilio Segre and Owen Chamberlain the 1959 Nobel Prize for Physics. The antineutron was discovered in proton–antiproton collisions at the Bevatron (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) by the team of Bruce Cork, Glen Lambertson, Oreste Piccioni, and William Wenzel in 1956, one year after the antiproton was discovered. 

In the very early universe (in the quark epoch from 10**-12 to 10**-6 seconds after the big bang, which was followed by the hadron epoch when the universe was too cool to form any new matter or antimatter) there was a roughly equal proportion of matter and anti-matter. They annihilated each other, but in a process not yet fully understood called baryogenesis, a slight excess of matter remained (one in about a billion pairs) that formed the current universe. 

When matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate each other and convert to energy (given by Einstein's equation E = M * C **2). That is an incomprehensibly large amount of energy. It is a hundred billion times more energy than a chemical explosion like TNT and 10,000 times more energy than a nuclear explosion. Just 1 gram of antimatter interacting with 1 gram of matter would be the energy equivalent to the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki. The gram of antimatter however would take vastly more energy to produce in the lab than would be derived from its interaction with matter. 

The simplest antimatter element is antihydrogen. It consists of an antiproton (instead of a proton), and a positron (instead of an electron). A positron is the same as an electron but positively charged. An anti-proton is like a proton, but negatively charged. How would anti hydrogen be created and at what cost? The cost of creating a gram of antihydrogen is 66 trillion dollars!! Mind bogglingly expensive and the most expensive substance on earth! 

On the other hand, we make some antimatter every day in hospitals, when we use radioactive atoms that decay into positrons. Positrons are anti-electrons. The reason the cost is put so high is that positrons weigh so little, and yet are valuable. The cost per positron is very cheap (about 1¢ each) but the cost per gram is enormous since positrons weigh about 10^-27 grams (that means decimal point followed by 26 zeros and then a 1). They are used for PET scans (stands for Positron Emission Tomography; look that up on Wikipedia), a very valuable tool for looking at the way the body functions. I suspect people will relate more to PET than anti hydrogen so will dwell a little bit on that in the next section!!

A PET scan can tell a patient's doctor about how their body uses oxygen, how their body processes glucose, and about their blood flow. These scans can give a patient's doctor insight into problems occurring at the cellular level. This helps them identify and evaluate certain complex systemic conditions and diseases, including heart problems and brain disorders. Around two million PET scans are performed annually in the United States. For instance, these scans help direct the best cancer treatment, including radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy for cancer. The scans show the effectiveness of the treatment as well. These scans also accurately diagnose heart conditions, helping doctors determine where surgery and medication for heart disease are appropriate. It uses a large machine with a hole in the center or a scanning device. Both will pick up subatomic particles or photons emitted by a radiotracer in the tissues or organ being examined. The radiotracer used for this scan depends on the particular tissues or organs of interest and the scan's purpose (Examples of commonly used radioactive tracers include tritium, carbon-11, carbon-14, oxygen-15, fluorine-18, phosphorus-32, sulfur-35, technetium-99, iodine-123, and gallium-67). The selected radiotracer is administered to the patient's body through a vein in their arm via an intravenous line. Once the radiotracer has been administered, the scanning part of the device slowly moves over the necessary part of the patient's body. As particular tissues in the body break down the radiotracer, positrons are emitted. When positrons are emitted in the body from the breakdown of the radiotracer, gamma rays are produced. The positron emission tomography scanner can pick up these gamma rays and use this information to compose an image map of the internal tissues. The higher the concentration of gamma rays, the brighter the spot will appear in the scan's image.

Unlike natural resources, antimatter is not mined or extracted; rather, it is meticulously crafted through intricate scientific processes. The intricate process of creating antihydrogen commences through particle collisions. In 1995, a groundbreaking moment occurred at the CERN super collider, where antiprotons were collided with xenon atoms. This collision generated positrons, which then combined with antiprotons to form antihydrogen. However, the fleeting nature of antimatter demanded containment strategies. Researchers succeeded in extending the lifespan of antihydrogen by cooling it to just above absolute zero, curbing its tendency to annihilate. 

Antimatter’s creation hinges on the development of antiprotons, a process demanding meticulous craftsmanship-one atom at a time-through particle accelerator. The pinnacle of such technology is the CERN super collider, a colossal piece of engineering spanning approximately 10 miles. This intricate marvel, constructed over a decade at a cost of $4.75 billion, harbors 9300 super-cooled magnets. Operating at a staggering 99.99% of the speed of light, this super collider demands a colossal 120 MW of electric power-equivalent to powering a substantial city. The annual operational budget stands at $1 billion, with electricity alone accounting for $23.5 million per year. Adding to this complexity is the mind-boggling time frame required to produce a mere gram of antihydrogen-estimated at an astonishing 100 billion years.

All of the antiprotons created at Fermilab's Tevatron particle accelerator (shut down in 2011) add up to only 15 nanograms. Those made at CERN amount to about 1 nanogram. If antihydrogen is far too expensive to make, and takes far too long, and takes far more energy to make than is released, then not sure what use it is to mankind since it is neither a power source nor a bomb technology.