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Antimatter cannot be stored in a container made of ordinary matter because antimatter reacts with any matter it touches, annihilating itself and an equal amount of the container. Antimatter in the form of charged particles can be contained by a combination of electric and magnetic fields, in a device called a Penning trap .
Along the boundary between matter and antimatter regions, however, annihilation (and the subsequent production of gamma radiation) would be detectable, depending on its distance and the density of matter and antimatter. Such boundaries, if they exist, would likely lie in deep intergalactic space.
The antihydrogen atom is the antimatter counterpart of the hydrogen atom. It has a negatively charged antiproton at the nucleus that attracts a positively charged positron orbiting around it. The spectral lines of hydrogen have frequencies determined by the energy differences between the quantum-mechanical orbital states of the electron.
All the particles that make up the matter around us, such electrons and protons, have antimatter versions which are nearly identical, but with mirrored properties such as the opposite electric charge.
While there are different views on what should be considered matter, the mass of a substance has exact scientific definitions. Another difference is that matter has an "opposite" called antimatter, but mass has no opposite—there is no such thing as "anti-mass" or negative mass, so far as is known, although scientists do discuss the concept ...
The CPT theorem implies that the difference between the properties of a matter particle and those of its antimatter counterpart is completely described by C-inversion. Since this C-inversion does not affect gravitational mass, the CPT theorem predicts that the gravitational mass of antimatter is the same as that of ordinary matter. [5]
Recent theoretical framework for negative mass and repulsive gravity (antigravity) between matter and antimatter has been developed, and the theory is compatible with CPT theorem. [9] When antihydrogen comes into contact with ordinary matter, its constituents quickly annihilate. The positron annihilates with an electron to produce gamma rays.
Lev Landau proposed in 1957 CP-symmetry, [10] often called just CP as the true symmetry between matter and antimatter. CP-symmetry is the product of two transformations: C for charge conjugation and P for parity.