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RE: The advent of hypothetical pion stars - a new form of compact objects in the universe
I'm confused by the relationship between up and antidown (and vice versa). Is it that they have the same spin, but one is an antiparticle?
Also, what differentiates a quark from an antiquark?
Up and antiup are the particle and antiparticule version of the same guy. Similarly for down and antidown. A particle and an antiparticle are the same, except with the electric charge (and all other quantum numbers in general) being opposite. This applies to quarks and antiquarks, as well as to electrons and positrons for instance.
Does it clarify?
Some, I think. My brain wants to understand it as if a particle is made up of the same stuff as an antiparticle, but with opposite charge, but that seems a little too simple. Is that closer to correct, or am I even farther off?
The elementary particles are not made of anything, as they are elementary. For those, what I said above applies.
For composite states, it is sufficient to replace any constituent by an anti-guy. For instance, a particle by the associated antiparticle and an antiparticle by the associated particle. I think this agrees with your brain :)