What if we had one gram of antimatter?

[Joshua Howard]

According to a handful of readily available and casually discovered internet sources, it would cost around $62 Trillion to create a gram of Antimatter; but the good news is that apparently, with enough effort, it could - with our technological knowledge - be done.

Earth assets according to another source are worth roughly $140 Trillion. Thus, in hypothesis, focus of less than 50% of global assets could pay for said antimatter.

For a moment, let us assume that we achieved world peace, poured 50% of the world's fiscal reserves into a massive new space program, created a gram of antimatter, and are now going to decide how to use it.

Howstuffworks.com suggests that one millionth of a gram could sufficiently fuel a year long Mars mission; let us assume that this is correct, and that we are planning to pour that entire energy arsenal into one massive ship-building project.

What would it look like? We're talking about enough power to fuel one million trips to Mars without refuelling; clearly more than enough to create a fully navigable ship capable of supporting a crew for an extended duration and travelling outside our solar system.

 

[Lindley]

The trouble is that it isn't just money you're putting in. It's energy. Can't get energy out without first putting it in. So really you've just proposed the world's biggest-capacity battery.

 

[tharpdevenport]

And, as I recall, there isn't a lot of antimatter on Earth. I recall hearing something like less than a gram, or less than a tea spoon for an estimated total on Earth.

 

[Alpha_Geek]

I say we shake the bottle and watch it fizz!

 

[sojourner]

And, as I recall, there isn't a lot of antimatter on Earth. I recall hearing something like less than a gram, or less than a tea spoon for an estimated total on Earth.

Um, ok, the OP did mention creating more to get the one gram. Did you read the post or just the title?

 

[PurpleBuddha]

The trouble is that it isn't just money you're putting in. It's energy. Can't get energy out without first putting it in. So really you've just proposed the world's biggest-capacity battery.

That is what I thought. I suppose this simply means anti matter would be very useful if we could miraculously find a large natural source.

Of course, if a cheap method of essentially converting energy to anti matter is ever devised, then we have a least solved much of the weight problem for the fuel powering our ships.

 

[Verteron]

Howstuffworks.com suggests that one millionth of a gram could sufficiently fuel a year long Mars mission; let us assume that this is correct, and that we are planning to pour that entire energy arsenal into one massive ship-building project.

It's not that simple to extract this energy usefully, regardless of what Star Trek tells us. When you allow antimatter to come in to contact with matter, it will "explode", in the sense that a few of the antiparticles will annihilate with a few of the particles. The energy this releases, however, will very quickly be converted in to kinetic energy in the remaining particles, causing them to fly apart very rapidly before having the chance to participate in the reaction.

It would be pretty difficult for us to power a drive system with antimatter, or anything that meaningfully needs the energy released over a long period.

Also, consider this:

How do you power a newtonian drive system with antimatter? It's possible you could collect magnetic particles in the solar wind and accelerate them to extremely high speeds using electromagnets, thus imparting force on the spacecraft (I suppose this is what an Impulse drive does), but you'd need to convert the gamma rates annihilation emits in to electrical energy, which is very hard to do in the first place. I'm not sure any technology exists that can harness this with anything approaching efficiency.

 

[Alpha_Geek]

You're saying that shaking the bottle to watch it fizz would be a bad thing then?

 

[Verteron]

You're saying that shaking the bottle to watch it fizz would be a bad thing then?

That depends. Do you like the city you live in?

 

[Kaziarl]

You're saying that shaking the bottle to watch it fizz would be a bad thing then?

That depends. Do you like the city you live in?

How about a small town that no one has heard of outside of the 2 families that live there?

 

[Mr. B]

Wouldn't it be more economical to research a more economical way to produce antimatter?

 

[Michael_One]

Antimatter... this powerful but tricky stuff has been an interest of mine for some time now. Having a math degree with a physics minor is good for something!

I've seen papers on medical uses for antiprotons in radiation therapy; the gamma rays from annihilating atoms in tumor cells means much less radiation exposure than convention means. Plus it's localized to where it's needed so you aren't zapping a cylindrical section of the paitent.

The big problem with antimatter in space propulsion is much the same as with nuclear rockets: though the energy density is fantastic the melting point of the engine materials limits the usefulness. Future development in superconducting magnets may lead to engines made of magnetic fields that don't have temperature problems.

A less technically demanding propulsion concept is antiproton initiated microfusion. Penn State University had a program studying this; their impression is it would work.

 

[Verteron]

Wouldn't it be more economical to research a more economical way to produce antimatter?

At best, producing a particle of antimatter will cost you E = mc^2. This is exactly the energy you'd be able to get out if you got it to annihilate with a particle of matter. So, it's a big battery - which is fundamentally different to, say, fusion, which does harness existing potential energy stored in matter we already have access to.

If you could come up with a way to 'magically' flip a particle and make it in to an antiparticle with a smaller amount of energy (I think the Enterprise-D has a device like this), then you might be in business, but such a process is way beyond anything we can do today, practically or theoretically. Such a process is at worst impossible, and at best the equivalent of waving one's hand and turning water in to wine.

 

[Bill Morris]

It depends on what kind of antimatter. Antiprotons are difficult and expensive to produce. Positrons are a different story. A laser beam trained on on gold plate 1 mm in thickness will produce a shower of positrons. Make a magnetic botlle, store them, and you've got energy on tap, just as you would with the vastly more expensive kind of antimatter. Either way, the power-to-weight ratio is enormous. But a gram of antimatter isn't worth a million trips to Mars. NASA has an article about using positron antimatter to go to Mars, written before the recent discovery of an easy way to produce positrons with gold plate and a laser. So their cost estimates are high.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2006/antimatter_spaceship.html

 

[Psion]

I agree with Alpha Geek. Let's shake the bottle. Him first, since it was his idea.

 

[Verteron]

It depends on what kind of antimatter. Antiprotons are difficult and expensive to produce. Positrons are a different story. A laser beam trained on on gold plate 1 mm in thickness will produce a shower of positrons. Make a magnetic botlle, store them, and you've got energy on tap, just as you would with the vastly more expensive kind of antimatter. Either way, the power-to-weight ratio is enormous. But a gram of antimatter isn't worth a million trips to Mars. NASA has an article about using positron antimatter to go to Mars, written before the recent discovery of an easy way to produce positrons with gold plate and a laser. So their cost estimates are high.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2006/antimatter_spaceship.html

That's actually really interesting. Most of what I'd thought about previously obviously involved hadrons... but using antileptons in a magnetic bottle to power your spacecraft, certainly opens new and interesting possibilities!

 

[tharpdevenport]

And, as I recall, there isn't a lot of antimatter on Earth. I recall hearing something like less than a gram, or less than a tea spoon for an estimated total on Earth.

Um, ok, the OP did mention creating more to get the one gram. Did you read the post or just the title?

1. I have heard of no method for creating antimatter, regardless of cost, and...

2. The thread title just speculates "What if". Maybe you should have read the title yourself before asking me...

 

[Joshua Howard]

All of your responses are very interesting indeed; which seems to yield the whole discussion to another question. Can Earth energy resources support sustained space exploration? When does the continued draining of our essential elements into the vaccum of space for larger and larger projects become a threat to our planet?

These questions seem to lend themselves to a certain suggestion that before we can colonialize space, we must discover a way to mine energy from other planetary or systemic bodies.

 

[sojourner]

And, as I recall, there isn't a lot of antimatter on Earth. I recall hearing something like less than a gram, or less than a tea spoon for an estimated total on Earth.

Um, ok, the OP did mention creating more to get the one gram. Did you read the post or just the title?

1. I have heard of no method for creating antimatter, regardless of cost, and...

2. The thread title just speculates "What if". Maybe you should have read the title yourself before asking me...

Your replies fail to address that your original reply ignores the original post which leads one to believe that you failed to read it.

Do you reply to all thread based on the threads title alone?

 

[Bill Morris]

The method I mentioned doesn't require such bulky equipment and facilities and could actually be implemented in space, grabbing more than one's fair share of sunlight as the energy source with a huge mylar balloon transparent on one side and with a mirrorlike interior on the other to concentrate nearly all sunlight that strikes the balloon to the center, where it is converted to electricity to drive the laser needed to produce the aforementioned antielectrons (positrons), and place them in magnetic bottles.

Such a balloon would obviously be just as good as an aluminum reflector dish yet cost very little, weigh very little, and fold up very small for transport into space. There could be lots of them in operation, producing as much positron antimatter as needed.