Antimatter is an exotic material that vaporizes when it contacts regular matter. If you hit an antimatter baseball with a bat made of regular matter, it would explode in a burst of light. It is rare to find antimatter on Earth, but it is believed to exist in the furthest reaches of the universe. Amazingly, antimatter can be created out of thin air -- scientists can create blasts of matter and antimatter simultaneously using light that is extremely energetic.
How do scientists make antimatter? When electrons, negatively charged subatomic particles, move back and forth they give off light. If they move very fast, they give off a lot of light. A great way to make them move back and forth is to blast them with powerful laser pulses. The electrons become almost as fast as light, and they generate beams of gamma-rays. Gamma-rays are like X-rays, such as those at doctor's offices or airport security lines, but are much smaller and have even more energy. The light beam is very sharp, about the thickness of a sewing needle even a few feet away from its source.
When gamma-rays made by electrons run into each other, they can create matter-antimatter pairs -- an electron and a positron. Now, scientists have developed a new trick to create these matter-antimatter pairs even more efficiently.
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