What is the importance of antihydrogen?

Answer 1

Antimatter is the opposite of matter and so when the two come in contact with each other, they become nothing but neutral energy. The idea that it is possible to create antiatoms is astounding simply because matter is everywhere. On top of this, it takes a lot of energy. so to create antimatter alone is rather difficult. It's also a difficult thing to sustain for more than a few seconds, if even that long, because it's always surrounded by matter. In other words... The fact that they were able to create it is simply incredible.

Further more, if we look into the theories there are about antimatter, we can see some amazing things that could end up being true.

One of these is the idea that the big bang began with a neutral Higgs particle which somehow became imbalanced. suddenly, this imbalance created a supermassive amount of energy. Because the Higgs particle is so heavy, much antimatter and matter were expelled. Because there was an imbalance, the amount was not perfectly equal and so it wasn't all cancelled out. The idea is that there was more matter. The matter that was equal to the antimatter was cancelled out by the antimatter and the rest of it became what we see as today's universe. Due to the fact that it was thrown outward so rapidly however, not all the matter and antimatter touched. Which meas that some anti matter flew way out to the far reaches of the universe...(Which was, scientifically speaking, much much smaller when if first started. Then it got really big really slowly... that is the meaning of big bang... slow expansion) So there could be regions of our universe bigger than our galaxy that are completely composed of dark matter.

It really isn't important, but one day a million years from now, when people can travel space that far out... then it may just matter...