• Question: How can you tell a black hole made out of antimatter from a black hole made out of matter?

    Asked by Mason The Amazing :) to Andrew, Hina, Ian, Kathryn, Leah-Nani, Xu on 14 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Kathryn Burrows

      Kathryn Burrows answered on 14 Jun 2018:

      ooo good question. Now a black hole of only antimatter could in theory exist, however, there is no such thing theorised because there is so little antimatter that it is not sufficient for it to form a black hole. A black hole of both matter and antimatter could not exist as the two would cancel each other out and annihilate.

    • Photo: Leah-Nani Alconcel

      Leah-Nani Alconcel answered on 15 Jun 2018:

      We don’t currently have a way to see antimatter outside the lab, so if antimatter black holes do exist, we wouldn’t know how to observe them.

    • Photo: Andrew Margetts-Kelly

      Andrew Margetts-Kelly answered on 20 Jun 2018:

      Amazing question btw 🙂
      If you worked out the mass of the black hole and poured the same amount of matter in, it would either be a black hole with twice the mass (if it’s a matter black hole), or it will annihilate and have no mass and no black hole anymore (if it’s an antimatter black hole). You’d have to wait a really long time though as it takes an infinite amount of time to do this experiment.

Comments

  • Photo: Leah-Nani

    Leah-Nani commented on :

    The idea is that every particle has an opposite. Electrons (matter) have positrons (antimatter), for instance. When matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate and produce gamma rays.