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bilsbie • yesterday at 2:07 PM • 3 replies • view on HN

What happens if an anti proton hits a normal hydrogen atom?


Replies

mr_toad • yesterday at 4:30 PM

It gets complicated, because protons and anti-protons are composite particles.

To simplify somewhat, one quark from each will annihilate, leaving four quarks and a lot of energy, which re-arrange into mesons (two quarks each), which then decay into photons, electrons, positrons and neutrinos.

retrac • yesterday at 2:28 PM

Annihilation. At low collision energies the antiproton and proton go through an interaction which ultimately results in photons (light energy). Matter is converted into energy as e = mc^2. Though the interaction passes through a number of exotic intermediate stages first.

gus_massa • yesterday at 2:20 PM

Someone has done the experiment: https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.108.0...

The link is cherry picked from a very good explanation by Gemini https://www.google.com/search?q=antiproton+hidrogen+colissio...