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Planet@lien

Banned

From: Duluth, MN

Registered: 2005-04-07

Posts: 25

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

Hey everyone!

Does anybody watch startrek, anyways I read going faster than light speed would require smashing matter and anti-matter together. The two oppisite matters will annihilate eachother and create energy...

Could this be possible?

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There are old astronauts, and there are bold astronauts, but there are no old bold astronauts
                                        Quote - Ben Bova

GCNRevenger

Member

From: Earth

Registered: 2003-10-14

Posts: 6,056

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

Planetalien, you might try using black or another dark color, your writing is unreadable in that teal color.

Make energy by smashing bottled antimatter and matter together? Sure, no Dilithium required.

But warp drive, that is a different matter. Star Trek warp drive is still purely fictional in its operating principles.

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[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]

[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]

srmeaney

Member

From: 18 tiwi gdns rd, TIWI NT 0810

Registered: 2005-03-18

Posts: 976

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

Antimatter/Matter reaction drives look to be of some interest by the folks at NASA (or rather the Advanced Propulsion folks at Marshall SFC). The folks at Marshall are looking for a few bright students with some interesting theories on Warp travel and Gravity.

Looks like they have plans to invade the nearest star system. And the Peoples NASA only has a five dollar budget.

I guess CERN isn't the only place with an antimatter stockpile.

Fledi

Member

From: in my own little world (no,

Registered: 2003-09-14

Posts: 325

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

I thought the dilithium crystals would be needed to keep the antimatter particles contained.

GCNRevenger

Member

From: Earth

Registered: 2003-10-14

Posts: 6,056

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

Dilithium is purely fictional, there is no such substance, nor could it exsist.

Its function in Star Trek land is to catylize the matter/antimatter reaction and causes the resulting plasma to move in a particular direction for easy use in likewise fictional warp engines.

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[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]

[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]

Commodore

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From: Upstate NY, USA

Registered: 2004-07-25

Posts: 1,021

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

Dilithium is purely fictional, there is no such substance, nor could it exsist.

Its function in Star Trek land is to catylize the matter/antimatter reaction and causes the resulting plasma to move in a particular direction for easy use in likewise fictional warp engines.

Isn't it Quartz?

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"Yes, I was going to give this astronaut selection my best shot, I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses."
---Shuttle Astronaut Mike Mullane

GCNRevenger

Member

From: Earth

Registered: 2003-10-14

Posts: 6,056

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

Actually I am pretty well versed, being that I am a professional chemist. The ST people even came up with a chemical "formula" for it.

And it is complete BS... at least by "our science"

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[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]

[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]

Fledi

Member

From: in my own little world (no,

Registered: 2003-09-14

Posts: 325

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

Ok but where do they get the antimatter from in ST then?

GCNRevenger

Member

From: Earth

Registered: 2003-10-14

Posts: 6,056

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

Another "magic" science fiction device that can reverse the charge on a particle, though at the expense of great energy.

This is, BTW, impossible as the total charge of the universe must remain a constant.

CERN makes antiprotons by smashing particles together.

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[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]

[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]

srmeaney

Member

From: 18 tiwi gdns rd, TIWI NT 0810

Registered: 2005-03-18

Posts: 976

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

Does anybody watch startrek, anyways I read going faster than light speed would require smashing matter and anti-matter together. The two opposite matters will annihilate eachother and create energy...

No. According to Quantum theory The faster you go, the energy that makes up your mass is vibrating in and out of existance with increasing magnitude. It is kind of tying off the alternate paths that the time that makes you up could of taken (the alternate reality paths or vectors). It takes a certain amount of time to tie off the possibilities and the Possibilities are many. The faster you go, the more time you need. Light is the assumed limit because that is as fast as you can go while existing in the universe as it is.
However, It is possible to travel at the speed of light because you can narrow your vector group to a two possibility vector of time. You have become a Tachyon and you are traveling on a string between two possibilities. Those two possibilities are the same field (tachyon) traveling in opposite directions of time simultaneously.

It's when you narrow that vector to one single possibility that the uncertainty and randomness breaks down and the Universe for you comes to a screaming halt.

clark

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Registered: 2001-09-20

Posts: 6,362

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

I have always wondered, if something goes faster than light, are we even able to measure it, or observe it?

My understanding is that light speed is the fastest observable speed... not neccessarily the fastest speed possible.

Admiral_Ritt

Member

From: Imperial Capital of the Pacifi

Registered: 2005-03-09

Posts: 64

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

Well, I don't know which is more Outlandish in harversting
Anti-matter.

1) that we use Spend 500 billion dollars building the facilities
and power sources to Create Anti-matter Factories.  Colliders
and such, are known ways to do this.

OR

2) Harvest if from the only natural source in our neighborhood
  the Solar Flares.   Flares create about 1 lb of anti-matter/emission. 
Can any man-made "harvesting probe" be desgined to survive
repeated encounters with the Solar corona?

3) Create Vacuum chambers with magnetic fields to separate
anti-virtual particles from virtual ones, to keep the anihillation
from happening.  Somehow I think this would cost in terms
or energy and facilities as much as using colliders.  No
free lunch here either.

GCNRevenger

Member

From: Earth

Registered: 2003-10-14

Posts: 6,056

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

Does anybody watch startrek, anyways I read going faster than light speed would require smashing matter and anti-matter together. The two opposite matters will annihilate eachother and create energy...

No. According to Quantum theory The faster you go, the energy that makes up your mass is vibrating in and out of existance with increasing magnitude. It is kind of tying off the alternate paths that the time that makes you up could of taken (the alternate reality paths or vectors). It takes a certain amount of time to tie off the possibilities and the Possibilities are many. The faster you go, the more time you need. Light is the assumed limit because that is as fast as you can go while existing in the universe as it is.
However, It is possible to travel at the speed of light because you can narrow your vector group to a two possibility vector of time. You have become a Tachyon and you are traveling on a string between two possibilities. Those two possibilities are the same field (tachyon) traveling in opposite directions of time simultaneously.

It's when you narrow that vector to one single possibility that the uncertainty and randomness breaks down and the Universe for you comes to a screaming halt.

More gibberish. A flawed interpretation of the consequences of the Uncertainty Principle and Special Relativity.

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[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]

[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]

Palomar

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From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

Another "magic" science fiction device that can reverse the charge on a particle, though at the expense of great energy.

This is, BTW, impossible as the total charge of the universe must remain a constant.

CERN makes antiprotons by smashing particles together.

*It was Mr. Scott with the shiny silver wrench in the Jeffries Tube! 

Sorry.

Last I read, nothing can travel at the speed of light because the closer, say, a pea travels to the SoL the more massive it becomes.  Eventually the pea would become so massive it'd take up nearly all the mass in the Universe...and just prior to the actual point of SoL would effectively stop itself because it IS The Mass of The Universe at that point.  And can't move beyond that because there's nothing left to move into/towards. 

However, I seem to recall someone debunking this.  Maybe GCN or Robert Dyck, not sure who.

--Cindy

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

John Creighton

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From: Nova Scotia, Canada

Registered: 2001-09-04

Posts: 2,401

Website

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

3) Create Vacuum chambers with magnetic fields to separate
anti-virtual particles from virtual ones, to keep the anihillation
from happening.  Somehow I think this would cost in terms
or energy and facilities as much as using colliders.  No
free lunch here either.

You would need some kind of asymmetry to exploit and I don’t know if there would be any. You could try spinning the vacuum chamber in some giant centrifuge and hop that the average velocity of the virtual particles is not zero with respect to the reference frame of the moving magnetic field. Maybe since the reference frame is accelerated this would be the case.

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Dig into the [url=http://child-civilization.blogspot.com/2006/12/political-grab-bag.html]political grab bag[/url] at [url=http://child-civilization.blogspot.com/]Child Civilization[/url]

Austin Stanley

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From: Texarkana, TX

Registered: 2002-03-18

Posts: 519

Website

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

Well the hard and fast limit for anti-matter production is twice the amount of energy it contains, for every particle of anti-matter you create and equal of matter must also be created.  I am also dubious about utilising anti-matter to be found in the so called "quantum foam" they don't call these things virtual particles for nothing.

If you want to look for a sci-fi energy solution I think anti-matter is a dead end.  What you realy want is some method to directly and toataly convert matter into energy.  Figure out how to do this, and you are set.

As for FTL travel I'm afraid it may forever be a pipe dream.  No one has every detected a tachyon or any other sort of FTL particle, which is good because of all the nasty causality problems such a particle could generate.

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He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

srmeaney

Member

From: 18 tiwi gdns rd, TIWI NT 0810

Registered: 2005-03-18

Posts: 976

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

More gibberish. A flawed interpretation of the consequences of the Uncertainty Principle and Special Relativity.

GCNRevenger, Do you even understand what a group vector is? For the magic ship Enterprise to go realy fast it must narrow the possible directions of travel "of that which makes up it's existance in the Universe" to two (Just to make sure that it doesnt pick up something that gets in it's way). A matter-Antimatter reaction is contrary to that.

I might as well tell you that the Universe was built by white rabbits with a polydimensional carrot.

Fine. Hyperspace is at the Cube of your own Gravity which is the Tangent to the Universe. To travel in Hyperspace, you must sustain that change. That should allow you to calculate the radius of a hyperspace field and the frequencies required to generate one.

Austin Stanley

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From: Texarkana, TX

Registered: 2002-03-18

Posts: 519

Website

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

I don't want to be rude, but none of this helps to explain how the Enterprise (or any other FTL ship) gets around the sevear violations in causality it can cause.  Hypothising about quantum theory this or quantum string that is all well in good.  But eventualy you have to start talking about real things with real measurable attributes, which then have real and unavoidable consiquences that tends to make these sorts of things impossible.

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He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

GCNRevenger

Member

From: Earth

Registered: 2003-10-14

Posts: 6,056

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

More gibberish. A flawed interpretation of the consequences of the Uncertainty Principle and Special Relativity.

GCNRevenger, Do you even understand what a group vector is? For the magic ship Enterprise to go realy fast it must narrow the possible directions of travel "of that which makes up it's existance in the Universe" to two (Just to make sure that it doesnt pick up something that gets in it's way). A matter-Antimatter reaction is contrary to that.

I might as well tell you that the Universe was built by white rabbits with a polydimensional carrot.

Fine. Hyperspace is at the Cube of your own Gravity which is the Tangent to the Universe. To travel in Hyperspace, you must sustain that change. That should allow you to calculate the radius of a hyperspace field and the frequencies required to generate one.

More babbling. I don't think you know what you are talking about.

If I am mistaken, then explain it better.

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[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]

[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]

Fledi

Member

From: in my own little world (no,

Registered: 2003-09-14

Posts: 325

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

Of course that is only true as long as you assume there is nothing beyond our 4 dimensional space-time.
But we should be quite busy with the colonization of the solar system in the next few centuries, so I think we can pass on worrying about FTL travel to our grandchildren. 

Austin Stanley

Member

From: Texarkana, TX

Registered: 2002-03-18

Posts: 519

Website

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

The key word here is assume.  I'll become a beliver when someone can give me some hard verifiable experimental evidence that such things exist.  Untill then I shall remain a skeptic.

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He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

publiusr

Banned

From: Alabama

Registered: 2005-02-24

Posts: 682

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

It is a lot like nanotechnology. Buckling down and building bigger rockets sticks in people minds, so they invent BS ways to get around it--like EELV assembly--warp drive, Delta II delivered nanotech swarms to build foam moon-bases and other such crap.

Stormrage

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From: United Kingdom, Europe

Registered: 2005-06-25

Posts: 274

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

Well the hard and fast limit for anti-matter production is twice the amount of energy it contains, for every particle of anti-matter you create and equal of matter must also be created.  I am also dubious about utilising anti-matter to be found in the so called "quantum foam" they don't call these things virtual particles for nothing.

If you want to look for a sci-fi energy solution I think anti-matter is a dead end.  What you realy want is some method to directly and toataly convert matter into energy.  Figure out how to do this, and you are set.

As for FTL travel I'm afraid it may forever be a pipe dream.  No one has every detected a tachyon or any other sort of FTL particle, which is good because of all the nasty causality problems such a particle could generate.

Not necessary. Using Antimatter in a warp engine is a dead end but not antimatter. Matter/Antimatter is the best form of propulsion. Only problem with them is the danger involved and the fact that making them in large quantity is next to impossible.

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"...all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by."

GCNRevenger

Member

From: Earth

Registered: 2003-10-14

Posts: 6,056

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

...which pretty much eliminates its usefulness as a source of energy for propulsion.

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[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]

[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]

Mars_B4_Moon

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Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,267

Re: matter and anti-matter - Bringing back the old idea

Physicists Create New Phase of Matter With "Extra" Time Dimension

https://futurism.com/the-byte/new-phase … -dimension