At this tiny scale, energy and mass are essentially equivalent. So when we say that matter annihilates, we mean that they transform into pure energy (in this case, as photons of light). They don't break into subatomic particles, because that still counts as mass. They just simply cease to exist.

As a side note, the "conversion rate" of mass into energy (and vice versa) is governed by Einstein's E=mc^2. All this equation means is that it takes a ridiculous amount of energy to create a small amount of mass, and vice versa, it only takes a small amount of mass to create a ridiculous amount of energy. Because antimatter annihilates completely (ie, 100% of its mass, as well as 100% of the regular matter's mass, gets converted into energy), antimatter is currently the most explosive thing known to mankind

[–] Plibbert@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Ok that makes sense.

Man that's pretty wild to think about. If antimatter was created at the same time as matter in the same quantity and distribution, then why are we here. Why didn't the entire universe essentially cancel itself out? Was there some factor that benefited regular matter or hindered antimatter? Is there some level of chaos on the atomic or subatomic scale that played in regular matter being the dominant? Has some crazy philosophical implications.

[–] Sabin10@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

You're describing the matter-antimatter asymmetry problem

https://home.cern/science/physics/matter-antimatter-asymmetry-problem

[–] BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

I mean if you just thought of all those questions on your own, that's damned impressive. You just summarized one of the greatest mysteries in particle physics. Here's a story about that exact question - what was the process that gave preference to creation of matter over antimatter?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-is-there-more-matter-than-antimatter/

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The universe very nearly did cancel itself out entirely. That’s why it is as empty as it is. The matter you see is the slight surplus there wasn’t enough antimatter to annihilate. Why this surplus? It’s one of the great remaining problems.

I think there’s an extreme form of the anthropogenic principle we can apply here. Universes may pop into existence constantly and destabilize into nothing because their physical laws aren’t fine tuned for stability, or because they don’t have an uneven amount of anti/matter. Perhaps universes are part of some extra-cosmic superstructure that’s just frothing like mad. Some bubbles last a little longer than others before they pop. We could be one of those. Perhaps the multiverse is a little bit of suds in some leviathan child’s bathtub.

[–] Plibbert@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Oh snap, you know this is a good point. What if the reason lies in other universes? Didn't we detect a possible fingerprint of a collision with another universe In the cosmic heat map looking thing? What if we had a collision at just the right time that caused the destruction of just enough anti-matter to throw off the balance.