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Antimatter was predicted to exist four years before it was observed, though the mathematics responsible for the prediction described it as matter with negative energy.

Findings

Additional insights we found via Veritasium

  1. When English physicist Paul Dirac set out to make quantum mechanics compatible with special relativity by combining Schrödinger's equation with Einstein's equation for relativistic energy, the mathematics showed that an electron could exist in four quantum states—two of which possessed negative energy.

  2. The Dirac equation is consistent with the concepts established by quantum and relativistic physics, having been validated by showing that electrons could exist in quantum states called spin up or spin down, each corresponding to a specific color of light observed in energized atoms.

  3. Three years after deriving his relativistic wave equation, Paul Dirac reframed the negative-energy electron as representing an antielectron, which would be difficult to detect because it would quickly combine with one of the many electrons in nature and disappear.

  4. In 1932, American physicist Carl Anderson discovered the antielectron, or positron, when conducting an experiment tracking the products of collisions between atmospheric gases and high-energy particles from space, thereby confirming the existence of antimatter.

  5. British physicist Arthur Schuster coined the term antimatter in letters to Nature in 1898, where he described antiatoms and antisolar systems possessing negative gravity.

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