How are dark matter and antimatter different? |
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What is dark matter and what is antimatter? Are they the same or different? – Namrata, age 13, Ghaziabad, India
Imagine an epic video game with your favorite hero as a character. Another character is a mirror-image twin who shows up occasionally, exploding everything they touch. And, to add an extra level of difficulty, the game includes a mysterious hive of minions hiding at every corner, changing the rules of the game, but never showing themselves.
If you think of these characters as types of matter, this video game is basically how our universe works.
The hero is regular matter, which is everything we can see around us. Antimatter is the mirror-image explosive twin that scientists understand well but can barely find. And dark matter is the invisible minions. It is everywhere, but we cannot see it, and scientists have no idea what it is.
Despite having similar-sounding names, dark matter and antimatter are completely different. Interestingly, physicists like me know exactly what antimatter is, but there is almost none of it around. On the other hand, we have no idea what dark matter is, but there is a lot of it everywhere.
All the regular matter around you is made of basic building blocks called atoms. Atoms have