Slashdot Mirror
Antimatter Space Drive
sckienle writes "Space.com has an article on using anti-matter for propulsion in space. It isn't true Star Trek warp stuff, in fact it is a variation on an fusion based pellet design I saw in the late 70's, but interesting concept. The concept is still somewhat of a dream, as stated in the article: 'The real hub is the storage [of antimatter]. There's a lot of technology between here and there.' Later on it also mentions that we can't produce a lot of antimatter efficiently yet. Still it might be worth the effort if the theoretical acceleration proves out." The BBC has a story about studying antimatter in a lab.
That is quite possibly the most circuitous way I have ever seen someone admit that something is impossible. Fascinating.
Dr. Joseph Hairston
Superintendent, CCBC
It isn't true Star Trek warp stuff, in fact it is a variation on an fusion based pellet design I saw in the late 70's, but interesting concept.
Are you sure those aren't tracers from the bad acid you took back in the late 70's?
I don't think anyone is arguing that antimatter would be just unbelievably useful to spacecraft, but the cost needs to be taken down by something like nine orders of magnitude -- the currently going rate for antiprotons is something like a million dollars per nanogram.
The cooling ring only helps you once you have antiprotons to cool down to antihydrogen. Right now the production of antiprotons itself is just too expensive.
We'll see antimatter missles :(
I mean, come on - why not post Linux vx. MacOS X and Emacs vs. vi stories while you are at it.
sic transit gloria mundi
"Later on it also mentions that we can't produce a lot of antimatter efficiently yet."
We'd be able to produce tons of it by now if the frickin' Vulcans didn't hold us back!
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
...At least to provide thrust for a vessel of any kind since it costs more energy (incredibly more, with current technology) to produce than it actually stores. The only advantage to using an antimatter/matter reaction as a propellant is the sheer efficiency of the reaction. You get a lot more push out of a lot less 'fuel'. If you can get away with carrying less total mass, then you don't have to accellerate or decelerate as much.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Faster, better, and cheaper than all the other antimatter drives we have already produced?
Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
Thanks to movies and television series such as Star Trek and especially Star Wars, most people have no idea just exactly how far another star system is.
The closest star is Tau Ceti, which is 4.7 Light years away, would still take a decade to reach and a decade to return even with a very, very, very advanced anti-matter engine -- a space shuttle with chemical engines, in comparsion, would take 100,000 years to reach there.
Anti-matter still costs approximately 40 quadrillion dollars per gram to make, and storing it and dealing with the gamma rays is quite another thing.
Sorry, sci-fi fans: we will never visit another star system in our lifetimes, and probably not even Mars with the amount of funding that goes to space.
Would it kill them to be a little more precise on:
- the distance from the Sun to the Oort cloud (about 250AU)
- the distance from the Sun to Pluto (about 40AU)
- the ratio of those two distances (apparently about 5)
?--
E_NOSIG
Actually, it's Alpha Centauri at about 4.2 light years.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Actually, you're both wrong. The closest star is the Sun. But that's just me being pedantic.
XML causes global warming.
Example: a dude sitting on a sled on a frozen pond, with a sackful of bricks. When he throws a brick off the sled in one direction, the sled moves in the other direction. Because there is very little friction between the sled and the ice, the sled keeps moving. Throw more bricks, and the sled will go faster.
To make everything clear: the sled is like a rocket, the bricks are like fuel, and space has even less friction than a frozen pond. Because the total momentum of the system must be conserved, as fuel is burned and exhaust is generated, the rocket moves forward.
In a just society, where the wants of the underprivileged are not left unattended-to, in a truly accepting and broad-minded multicultural community where spiritual values and emotional resonance are cherished and rewarded, it's clear that the hierarchically-constrained "male physics" which enforces today's high antimatter prices would cease to obtain.
I invite you all to contemplate the joys and rewards of a non-judgemental, people-centered physics, which takes emotional and spiritual considerations are factored into every equation. With such a "physics of the heart" taught as a scientifically acceptable and morally rewarding alternate truth -- for there are always many mutually exclusive and identically valid truths, especially in matters of radiation -- adequate supplies of antimatter would be within the reach of all! Imagine every child having enough antimatter to dream and to grow, to achieve his or her full creative potential as an individual, regardless of his or her astrological sign!
Is it truly so radical, to contemplate making science the servant of humanistic values, rather than their enemy? Is it really necessary for antimatter, like the so-called "Western literary canon", to be the exclusive province of dead white males? I think not.
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
It topped out at 3,492,901 MPH, and then the impact of space dust turned their little umbrella thingy inside out. Now they're trying to figure out how to stop the damn thing, by firing a cold fusion cannon out the front...
Any physicists out there? Why is antimatter so hard to produce? What I know about the matter is limited to the following - (please correct me if you have the appropriate knowledge)
1. The amount of antimatter currently visible in the known universe is negligible compared to the amount of matter.
2. However, in the big bang, antimatter and matter are supposed to have been created in equal amounts. So where did antimatter go?
3. QED equations for antiparticles are exactly the same as those for normal ones if you reverse the direction of time.
The only conclusion that *I* can draw from this is that there is no antimatter left nowadays because it is travelling in the opposite direction in time, whatever that means.
That in turn gives a simplistic explanation of why it is hard to create antimatter - there is no causal relationship normally. According to my weird intuition, you can only create antimatter in a material universe by violating 'normal' causality.
PS. I am *not* a physicist.
I miss my rubber keyboard.(Homepage)
Example: a dude sitting on a sled on a frozen pond, with a sackful of bricks. When he throws a brick off the sled
Te ice breaks and he sinks....thus, never posting about his high school physics class again.
There are already numerous propulsion ideas that are not only feasible but much better than anything that is used today.
The issue is that anything inolving nuclear power is a political impossibility, at least for another generation. Antimatter drives have exactly the same issues (hum... or maybe this is not widely understood... 'antimatter' sounds much better than 'nuclear'...)
Tor
...it would seem to me that they have the right idea. They used a crystal of sorts(dilithium) to regulate the matter/antimatter reaction. Here's the reality check:
Since matter/antimatter reactions cause 2 gamma-frequency photons to be thrown off at right predictable angles to the impact vectors of the original matter and antimatter particles, an engine could be designed that ensured that one of the 2 photons always exited from the engine exhaust port to propel the ship. What of the other one? Position a crystal in the appropriate location to catch the second photon. Depending on the structure of the crystal, the result would either be mechanical (heat or vibration) or electrical energy which could be converted and/or stored as needed.
wouldn't it take just as much force to bring one of these babies to a stop? At the type of speeds they are talking about, wouldn't deceleration be a couple of month process?
I don't think there's any avoiding a mechanical effect, because momentum must be preserved. In fact, in your scheme it's the photon you catch that propels the ship. The one that goes out the "exhaust" carries away the useless wrong-way momentum. Now the problem is: What can absorb those photons without quickly becoming hot enough to vaporize?
and by crystal, you mean magic little rock.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on