Can we see antimatter with photons?

[Light Bearer]

This is probably a stupid question...but I'm curious to know whether or not we can 'see' antimatter? In the hypothetical situation where enough antimatter comes together to form something macroscopic/doesn't interact with regular matter and destroy itself, could we see it? Would photons (photons are their own antiparticles, right?) interact with antimatter in such a way as to allow it to become visible to our eyes?

 

[Meir Achuz]

positrons are just as visible as electrons. Photons interact with charge, whether it is matter or 'antimatter'.

 

[kurros]

In the hypothetical situation where enough antimatter comes together to form something macroscopic/doesn't interact with regular matter and destroy itself, could we see it? Would photons (photons are their own antiparticles, right?) interact with antimatter in such a way as to allow it to become visible to our eyes?

For sure! Photons cannot tell the difference between matter and anti-matter; it looks the same to them. If you had an "anti-baseball" it would look just like a regular baseball, so long as it was kept under high vacuum. Of course if you had such a vast amount of anti-matter in your lab you'd be on the edge of blowing up your city.

 

[DaveC426913]

Antimatter is simply anti-electrons, anti-protons and anti-neutrons. As Meir and kurros point out, photons do not know the difference. Neither, in fact, does antimatter. It will happily go about making molecules and baseballs just like matter does. (As long as there's no matter around.) But since we see it with photons, we won't see any difference.