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From: lew@ihuxr.UUCP (Lew Mammel, Jr.)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: anti-energy
Message-ID: <1099@ihuxr.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 24-May-84 18:26:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihuxr.1099
Posted: Thu May 24 18:26:56 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 30-May-84 09:13:35 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 21

Bob Clark wants to know why, if we have anti-matter, don't we have
anti-energy. The quick answer is that photons are their own anti-particles.
On the other hand (so to speak) there are anti-neutrino's, and since these
are (presumably) massless, we could say that they constitute a form of
anti-energy.

More generally, we could say that the discovery of anti-matter constituted
a rounding out of our knowledge of elementary particles, rather than the
discovery of a distinct class of particles.

Each particle is distinguished by a set of quantum numbers, e.g. charge,
spin, isospin, lepton number, and strangeness.  Its antiparticle is
just the one with the negative of certain of these, including charge,
lepton number and strangeness.  If these are all zero, the particle
is its own antiparticle.

The "pi zero" particle is a massive particle which is its own antiparticle.
The energy versus matter formulation of the question is based on a
false dichotomy.

	Lew Mammel, Jr. ihnp4!ihuxr!lew