> Every time they bang into something, there’s a chance of annihilation, but it doesn’t always happen
This goes against everything I've ever been told about antimatter. So a positron and electron can collide and not annihilate each other? How does that work? What happens to them in that case, and why does everybody say otherwise?
There is like a 60% chance that they annihilate on the spot and a 40% chance that they form "positronium" that is similar to an Hydrogen atom but with an electron+positron instead of electron+proton. The positronium has a half life of less than a millisecond, so if you blink they go away and you can ignore the intermediate "positronium" step. More details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positronium#Formation_and_deca...
But it's more weird. In the research article they explain that they make positronium, then use microwaves to excite the positronium so it's bigger and the electron and positron are not very close and they don't colide (I think this increase the half-life), then they put the positronium inside the cyclotron and when they turn it on the electron escapes but the positron get's trapped.
I think in the case where they don't annihilate they will just scatter off each other.