WHAT IS ANTIMATTER

ANTI-MATTER :

Antimatter is the opposite of normal matter. More specifically, the sub-atomic particles of antimatter have properties opposite those of normal matter. The electrical charge of those particles is reversed. Antimatter was created along with matter after the Big Bang, but antimatter is rare in today's universe, and scientists aren't sure why.

Where is it?

Antimatter particles are created in ultra high-speed collisions. In the first moments after the Big Bang, only energy existed. As the universe cooled and expanded, particles of both matter and antimatter were produced in equal amounts. Why matter came to dominate is a question that scientists have yet to discover. 

One theory suggests that more normal matter was created than antimatter in the beginning, so that even after mutual annihilation there was enough normal matter left to form stars, galaxies and us. 

To better understand antimatter, one needs to know more about matter. Matter is made up of atoms, which are the basic units of chemical elements such as hydrogen, helium or oxygen. Each element has a certain number of atoms: Hydrogen has one atom; helium has two atoms; and so on.

In 1928, British physicist Paul Dirac wrote down an equation that combined quantum theory and special relativity to describe the behaviour of an electron moving at a relativistic speed. The equation – which won Dirac the nobel prize in 1933  – posed a problem: just as the equation x2=4 can have two possible solutions (x=2 or x=-2), so Dirac's equation could have two solutions, one for an electron with positive energy, and one for an electron with negative energy. But classical physics (and common sense) dictated that the energy of a particle must always be a positive number.

Dirac interpreted the equation to mean that for every particle there exists a corresponding antiparticle, exactly matching the particle but with opposite charge. For the electron there should be an "anti -electron", for example, identical in every way but with a positive electric charge. The insight opened the possibility of entire galaxies and universes made of antimatter.

WHAT IS QUARK ?

A quark is a fundamental particle which possesses both electric charge and 'strong' charge. They combine in groups of two or three to form composite objects (called mesons and baryons, respectively), held together by the strong force. Protons and neutrons are familiar examples of such composite objects -- both are made up of three quarks. 

Quarks and Lepton  are the building blocks which build up matter, i.e., they are seen as the "elementary particles". In the present standard model, there are six "flavors" of quarks. They can successfully account for all known mesons and Baryons  (over 200). The most familiar baryons are the Proton and Neutron , which are each constructed from up and down quarks. Quarks are observed to occur only in combinations of two quarks (mesons), three quarks (baryons). There was a recent claim of observation of particles with five quarks (pentaquark), but further experimentation has not borne it out.

WHAT IS ANTI-QUARK ?

Anti quark is the opposite of quark.the spins ,the charge are same but its a opposite of QUARK.

A anti-quark is a fundamental particle WHICH BUILD UP ANTI MATTER.

Antimatter spaceship?

When antimatter particles interact with matter particles, they annihilate each other and produce energy. This has led engineers to speculate that antimatter-powered spacecraft might be an efficient way to explore the universe.

it takes about $100 billion to create a milligram of antimatter. While research can get by on a lot less antimatter, this is the minimum that would be needed for application. 

"To be commercially viable, this price would have to drop by about a factor of 10,000," the agency wrote. Power generation creates another headache: "It costs far more energy to create antimatter than the energy one could get back from an antimatter reaction."

The design calls for pellets of Deuterium and tritium (heavy hydrogen isotopes with one or two neutrons in their nuclei, unlike common hydrogen that has no neutrons). An antiproton beam would then be beamed into the pellets, which would bash against a layer of uranium embedded inside. 

After the antiprotons strike the uranium, both would be destroyed and create fission products that would spark a fusion reaction. Properly directed, this could make a spacecraft move.