21 upvotes, 2 direct replies (showing 2)
View submission: What causes the mutual annihilation of matter-antimatter reactions?
It's not just electric charge but also the other 'charges' represented by quantum numbers (like spin or lepton number). Matter and antimatter have opposite quantum numbers and so if you were to 'put them in the same place' you would have created a spatial region with energy but totals of 0s for quantum numbers. That's annihilation and results in particles like photons.
Comment by niteman555 at 24/11/2024 at 05:38 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Is there a model for the actual interaction? How granularly do we understand that at one frame there are 2 massive particles and some subsequent one there aren't?
Comment by Gold333 at 09/12/2024 at 21:50 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Why would 0’s for quantum numbers cause annihilation?