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I've looked everywhere I can think, this side of paywalls, and everyone provides Feynman diagrams or $E=mc^2$ to describe or calculate annihilation. It occurred to me that virtual particles come into existence and annihilate each other all the time.

I'm trying to understand this disconnect. Does virtual particle creation cause "anti-energy" that counters the energy released during annihilation?

Has anyone actually measured the energy output of a proton/antiproton collision? I couldn't find a record of any such experiment. It's all theoretical calculations. All of my search results are cluttered by "gravity works on antimatter!" announcements.

jng224
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Robert Rapplean
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I'm not sure if this answers your question, but Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a standard type of medical imaging and uses a matter-antimatter annihilation process - namely electrons and positrons annihilate producing gamma rays. Some details below: (Referencing Wikipedia)

"The most significant fraction of electron–positron annihilations results in two 511 keV gamma photons being emitted at almost 180 degrees to each other."

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron_emission_tomography)

ad2004
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