What is antimatter?

Antimatter was first proposed by physicist Paul Dirac in 1928. For each particle of matter that exists, there exists a corresponding particle of antimatter, with the same mass but the opposite electric charge. This idea was confirmed in 1932 when positrons (antiparticles to electrons) were found to be naturally occurring in cosmic rays, and since then anti-particles have been produced in labs (including the first anti-atom at CERN in 1995). Because matter and antimatter annihilate when they come together, and the Big Bang produced equal amounts of each, scientists don’t understand why any matter still exists, or, if the antimatter’s somehow disappeared, where it’s all gone.

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