text: what is antimatter? when an electron and its anti particle meet  what happens to the mass? does it disappear? wouldnt that violate the law of conservation of matter? antimatter or contra-terrene matter is matter that is composed of the antiparticles of those that constitute normal matter. if a particle and its antiparticle come in contact with each other, the two annihilate and produce a burst of energy, which results in the production of other particles and antiparticles or electromagnetic radiation. in these reactions, rest mass is not conserved, although (as in any other reaction) energy (e=mc²) is conserved.   in 1928 paul dirac developed a relativistic equation for the electron, now known as the dirac equation. curiously, the equation was found to have negative energy solutions in addition to the normal positive ones. this presented a problem, as electrons tend toward the lowest possible energy level; energies of negative infinity are nonsensical. as a way of getting around this, dirac proposed that the vacuum can be considered a "sea" of negative energy, the dirac sea. any electrons would therefore have to sit on top of the sea.  thinking further, dirac found that a "hole" in the sea would have a positive charge. at first he thought that this was the proton, but hermann weyl pointed out the hole should have the same mass as the electron. the existence of this particle, the positron, was confirmed experimentally in 1932 by carl d. anderson.  today's standard model shows that every particle has an antiparticle, for which each additive quantum number has the negative of the value it has for the normal matter particle. the sign reversal applies only to quantum numbers (properties) which are additive, such as charge, but not to mass, for example. the positron has the opposite charge but the same mass as the electron. an atom of antihydrogen is composed of a negatively-charged antiproton being orbited by a positively-charged positron . notation physicists need a notation to distinguish particles from antiparticles. one way is to denote an antiparticle by adding a bar (or macron) over the symbol for the particle. for example, the proton and antiproton are denoted as  and , respectively.  another convention is to distinguish particles by their electric charge. thus, the electron and positron are denoted simply as e− and e+. adding a bar over the e+ symbol would be redundant and is not done.  antimatter as fuel in antimatter-matter collisions, the entire rest mass of the particles is converted to energy. the energy per unit mass is about 10 orders of magnitude greater than chemical energy, and about 2 orders of magnitude greater than nuclear energy that can be liberated today using chemical reactions or nuclear fission/fusion. the reaction of 1 kg of antimatter with 1 kg of matter would produce 1.8×1017 j (180 petajoules) of energy (by the equation e=mc²). in contrast, burning a kilogram of gasoline produces 4.2×107 j, and nuclear fusion of a kilogram of hydrogen would produce 2.6×1015 j. not all of that energy can be utilized by any realistic technology, because as much as 50% of energy produced in reactions between nucleons and antinucleons is carried away by neutrinos, so, for all intents and purposes, it can be considered lost.[2]  the scarcity of antimatter means that it is not readily available to be used as fuel, although it could be used in antimatter catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion. generating a single antiproton is immensely difficult and requires particle accelerators and vast amounts of energy—millions of times more than is released after it is annihilated with ordinary matter, due to inefficiencies in the process. known methods of producing antimatter from energy also produce an equal amount of normal matter, so the theoretical limit is that half of the input energy is converted to antimatter. counterbalancing this, when antimatter annihilates with ordinary matter, energy equal to twice the mass of the antimatter is liberated—so energy storage in the form of antimatter could (in theory) be 100% efficient. antimatter production