Question: What do matter and anti-matter do?

Greig Cowan answered on 16 Jun 2014:

It depends what you mean. Here’s an example. Electrons are the small, negatively-charged particles that orbit the nuclei of atoms, e.g., a single electron orbits a single proton to make an atom of hydrogen. The anti-matter equivalents of negative electrons are positvely-charged electrons, usually called positrons. Since they have negative charge they will move in different directions in an electric field.

Scientists at CERN have recently combined positron with anti-protons (negatively charged protons) to make an atom of anti-hydrogen! This shows you that although matter and anti-matter have slightly different properties, they also follow the same underlying physical laws. It is a bit like they are different sides of the same coin.

Something that I am trying to do in my research is to look for the very tiny differences between matter and antimatter. These are not visible by looking at atoms of anti-hydrogen, but we can do other experiments to test this.