Antimatter

Beyond the comfortable, familiar world of matter lies a looking-glass world: the world of antimatter. Antimatter consists of particles that are mirror images of those of matter. And should a particle of antimatter meet its matter counterpart, both are annihilated in a spectacular burst of energy. Science fiction? No, science fact. Long a topic for science fiction writers, antimatter is real. As Frank Close shows in this fascinating account, the extraordinary idea of mirror particles to matter was proposed by the physicist Paul Dirac. His elegant theory predicted the existence of anti-electrons, or positrons. And sure enough, they were found, on Earth as well as in space.