Positrons

POSITRONS

In the year 1928 Paul Adrian Maurice Dirac (1902-1984) published his work in which he showed that the wave formulas of electron had two times more solutions then the knowledge of that time presented. He discovered that those strange solutions described a particle of identical features as electron but of a positive charge (e+). The particle he called the positron.

    Next couple of years the positron was only a theory. Nobody observed them and even having some proves of its subsistence nobody managed to interpret them correctly. As far as in 1932 Carl Anderson found some tracks of positrons moving through a fog track chamber an interpreted the occurrence correctly. Both with Millikan they conducted some experiments researching cosmic radiation. They placed a fog track chamber in the strong magnetic field. The particles of the cosmic radiation moving through it were aberrated in this field. This gave the possibility of the determination of their molecular composition (the trajectory of the particle in the magnetic field depend on it's mass and charge - protons and electrons have got other trajectories). Positive particles deviate to the one side in magnetic field, and negative particles to the opposite side.
    Scientists made some photographs of particles trajectories. On some of this photographs Anderson discovered strange trajectories. Those were electron's trajectories but they were deviate in the wrong direction. What could that meant? This cannot be protons or alpha particles, because they have got bigger mass than electrons, and their trajectories in magnetic field are different. From the same reason this cannot be also any others well-known particles. It had to be positrons.
    Anderson interpreted this phenomenon exactly in this way. For this discovery in 1936 he was awarded a Nobel Prize.
    The first antiparticle was discovered.