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MENTAL MODEL · M6268

Annihilation

Annihilation
TechnicalHigh supportPhysics
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Version 1.0.0 · Updated 2026-07-28

CORE DEFINITION

Annihilation refers to the process when matter and its antimatter meet, resulting in complete matter-energy conversion into energy (e.g., in the form of photons), also known as mutual destruction, cancellation, or pair annihilation. The annihilation process obeys Einstein's mass-energy equivalence E=mc² and conservation of momentum, where E is the energy produced, m is the total rest mass of the matter and antimatter before annihilation, and c is the speed of light ≈ 3×10⁸ m/s. For example, the energy produced by the annihilation of half a gram of antimatter is roughly equivalent to the energy released by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (i.e., one gram of antimatter annihilation yields about 20-30 kilotons of TNT equivalent, or approximately 20 billion kilocalories). When a positron and an electron collide and annihilate, energy is released in the form of photons; this process still satisfies the law of conservation of charge because the total charge before and after annihilation remains zero.

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Annihilation refers to the process when matter and its antimatter meet, resulting in complete matter-energy conversion into energy (e.g., in the form of photons), also known as mutual destruction, cancellation, or pair annihilation. The annihilation process obeys Einstein's mass-energy equivalence E=mc² and conservation of momentum, where E is the energy produced, m is the total rest mass of the matter and antimatter before annihilation, and c is the speed of light ≈ 3×10⁸ m/s.

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In particle physics, when a particle and its antiparticle meet, mass is converted into energy (usually producing photons), following conservation of energy and momentum; it is the process by which matter "disappears" into pure radiation.

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