I recently found out that a PET scan stands for a positron emission tomography. Are there any other practical uses of antimatter in the present?
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I don't know if the other antiparticles have been exploited, but positrons are used in metallurgical studies. Positron annihilation spectroscopy is one particular application. |
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I don't know if this counts as "practical", but antiprotons are used in the Tevatron to increase the center-of-mass energy of collisions with protons. In the LHC, however, the rest-mass is so much smaller than the Lorentz-boosted mass in the center-of-mass frame, that it basically isn't worth the hassle of using antiprotons. This may just be a quirk of historical naming, but anti-neutrinos are typically much more common than neutrinos, since they are formed via beta-decay, which is happening all around us all the time. |
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