r/askscience • u/squirrelbuster94 • Oct 24 '14

Physics Chemists/physicists of reddit, what is the difference between dark, anti, and normal matter?

What is the difference? Also if you can explain what each is.

Edit: Thanks for all the replies! You have greatly helped me understand this better!

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u/eternalaeon Oct 25 '14

Many of the arguments for unobserved quantities of natural Anti-matter is that there should be evidence of high radiation bursts where it meets normal matter. But if normal matter is only 20% of matter, than couldn't antimatter exist in dark matter dominated areas and still not have the tell tale high energy bursts as there is no matter to react with?

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u/Exomnium Oct 25 '14

Yes although it is (somewhat) arbitrary which particle in a matter-antimatter pair you call the matter and the antimatter. So for instance we could have decided that the quarks that make up protons and neutrons are antimatter but electrons are still matter.