Magmatter: Does it exist?

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-08-29 18:31:56

There is some interesting stuff on the Orionsarm website, of particular interest to me is the idea of Magmatter, could it exist? What do you think. Here is part of the article found at http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48630634d2591

[size=200]Magmatter[/size]
[size=150]Superstrong exotic matter made from various monopole particles[/size]

Image from Steve Bowers
Magmatter reinforcement makes the construction of very large scale megastructures possible, such as this diurnal (Banks) orbital

Magmatter is a form of exotic matter which is made up of extremely small atom-like particles, which themselves are made up of a number of different types of topological vacuum defects known as monopoles. Magmatter "atoms" are much smaller than atoms of ordinary matter; for this reason magmatter is much denser. Because of the much higher binding energy holding the atoms together, magmatter is also much stronger than ordinary matter and has other useful properties However the difficulties associated with its manufacture and use, and because of safety issues concerning its proximity to normal matter, almost all magmatter creation and manipulation technology can only be used by third singularity transapients and above.

Magtrons and Magnuclei

Each type of monopole has a specific range of conserved topological qualities, the most important of which is magcharge. This fundamental unit of magnetic charge has a value of 137/2 times the fundamental unit of the electric charge, the charge on the electron. Monopoles of the type known as 'magtrons' can have a magcharge of -1, and this is the lightest magcharged particle. The magtron has a +1 or -1 magcharge and a mass of 1.5 TeV/c2. The types known as "magnuclei" can have multiple units of magnetic charge, typically from +1 magcharge up to +12, although it is possible to create magnucleons with higher magcharges. Negatively charged magnuclei also exist, but they are rarely used. Magnuclei have a mass of around 10 TeV/c)2 per magcharge. These two types of monopole, magtrons and magnuclei do not annihilate each other. On the other hand, just as electrons and protons have an antiparticle the two kinds of monopole have their antiparticles (the bar-magtron and the bar-magnucleon family) and if a monopole encountered its own antiparticle that results in annihilation for both particles. Monopoles are entropically disfavored in high energy physics reactions - they are only very rarely, if ever created in accelerators and need fine control over vacuum topology for their creation. Once created, however, both magtrons and magnuclei are stable. Both magtrons and magnuclei are fermions and are believed to be composed of a bosonic magnetic monopole and a neutral fermion.

If a magtron meets a magnucleus, they bind together. Based on the strong magnetic charges combined with the high magtron mass, one would expect magatoms to bind with an approximate energy of 300 TeV. At short distances, however, the magnetic charge is strongly screened out by an effect known as vacuum magnetic polarization which limits pure magnetic forces to MeV binding energies. The magmatter monopoles are also bound by an additional short-range interaction mediated by the Higgs field. Inside magatoms, this interaction is much stronger than the magnetic force. Magatoms have binding energies of approximately 300 GeV. Thanks to the Higgs-boson binding, which is always attractive regardless of the magnetic charge, magatoms with equal magnetic charges of magtron and magnucleus can form. They are very rare, because in order to form such an atom, very strong repulsive magnetic forces have to be overcome.

Negative and positive magnuclei can also form magatoms that are approximately 10 to 50 times smaller than the magtron-based magatoms. They are much more difficult to use as a construction material because different magnuclei are not subject to the Pauli exclusion principle, which in most cases prevents formation of more complex molecules. The rest of the article refers to magtron-based magatoms.

Magmatter Scale and Strength

The smallest magatoms have diameters of 3E-19 m, 300 million times smaller than an atom of conventional matter. As a typical magatom is 10,000 times heavier than a typical conventional atom, magmatter’s typical density is 1E33 kg/m3. Since force is energy per unit distance, the force needed to break a magchemical bond is larger than that needed to break an electronic chemical bond by a factor of the energy scaling (300 GeV / 13.7 eV) divided by the length scaling, or 7 million trillion (7E18). The strength of a material is usually defined as the force per unit area required to make the material fail. Since each magchemical bond can withstand 7E18 times greater force, and there are (300 million)2 times more bonds per unit area, the strength of magmatter is about 8E35 times greater than that of its normal matter equivalent.

For applications where high strength materials are required, the relevant parameter is usually the strength per unit mass (if you have a weak but very light material, you can compensate for low strength by using a lot of the stuff, and maybe still end up with a lighter weight structure than if you used a strong but dense material). Strength per unit mass is usually measured by the free breaking length, or how tall a structure of the given material can be in a homogeneous gravity field of 1G before it collapses under its own weight. It is proportional to the binding energy ratio (300 GeV / 13.7 eV) and inversely proportional to the ratio of magatom masses (10,000). The free breaking length is therefore approximately 2 million times longer than that of an equivalent conventional mass. While typical magmatter materials have free breaking lengths of approximately 200 million kilometers, materials with free breaking lengths up to 20 billion kilometers are known. This means that magmatter has the tensile strength required to hold a Banks orbital or even a Ringworld together.

Magmatter Chemistry

Although magmatter particles are fermions and form large structures with typical binding angles similar to molecules, the mechanisms behind magatom bonding are very different. Unlike normal chemistry, where simple quantum mechanics and single-particle approximations are enough to successfully model molecular properties, similar predictions for magmatter are much more complicated as full quantum field theory and multiparticle approaches are needed. Combined with difficulties in performing experiments with magmatter, this leaves magmatter constructions in the hands of higher transapients. Despite this, modosophont researchers have often appropriated names from regular chemistry to refer to magmatter structures with similar properties, for example magcarbon for tetravalent magatoms forming large molecules.

Typical melting points of almost all magmatter substances are above 1E13 K. This means that under normal conditions, magmatter is always very close to absolute zero and magatoms are always sitting in the optimal-energy positions in the lattice. Probably the biggest challenge in magmatter technology is to provide high enough temperatures for functions that require quick restructuralization of magmatter crystals.

Interactions Between Magmatter and Normal Matter

Experience of the everyday world suggests that one chunk of matter should not be able to interpenetrate another chunk. This comes from our experience with matter that is held together by electrons. Electrons have the property that no two may occupy the same space at the same time (unless they have different spin states). If you push your hand against a table, the electrons in your hand can't occupy the same space as the electrons in the table, so they bunch up, the electric field strength increases, this requires energy, and so the table pushes back on your hand.

Electrons can occupy the same space and time as a magmatter monopole. So can protons and neutrons and all the other particles that make up normal matter. There is nothing to prevent normal matter from just moving through a chunk of magmatter. If the monopoles had an electric field, there could be interactions that might repel or attract normal matter, but they do not.
There are several excitation states of monopoles called dyons that posses an electric charge, but they are unstable and therefore magmatter in electrically neutral in its normal state. Primary interactions between normal matter and magmatter are all absent.

Monopoles do have a magnetic field. This can interact with matter to some extent. In fact, due to the strength of the magnetic field, this interaction of normal matter with a lone monopole can be approximately the strength of a chemical bond. The interaction of matter with magnetic fields can be divided up into several categories.

•Diamagnetic matter repels and is repelled from magnetic fields. Most matter is diamagnetic. Free monopoles will avoid diamagnetic matter, being repelled from its volume. This is not a strong interaction, but is significant enough to prevent free monopoles from getting lodged in most forms of matter.
•Paramagnetic matter attracts and is attracted to magnetic fields. Liquid oxygen, for example, is one of the strongest common paramagnets. Free monopoles are attracted to paramagnetic stuff, and can get stuck inside it. However (and this is important) all core electrons are diamagnetic, so that free monopoles will tend to stay away from the atomic cores and the nucleus.
•Ferromagnetic matter strongly attracts and is attracted to magnets. Iron, nickel, and cobalt are all ferromagnets, and are used to make household magnets. Free monopoles are attracted to ferromagnets, and will bond to them with something on the order of chemical bond strength.
•Antiferromagnets have no strong macroscopic magnetic interaction, but they have a microscopic magnetic ordering. Free monopoles are strongly repelled from antiferromagnets.
•Superconductors are strongly repelled from, and repel, any magnetic field. Free monopoles are strongly repelled from a superconductor.
All the above assumes free monopoles. When monopoles bind together into a magatom, the opposite magcharges screen each other to make a composite structure that, on the scale of a normal atom, is magnetically neutral. A single neutral magatom or magmolecule would pass through normal matter as if it were not there. The exception would be a magatom or magmolecule with a net electric dipole moment. Just as some normal atoms act like tiny bar magnets, so some magatoms act like tiny bar electrets. The electric field polarizes the surrounding matter, binding weakly to it.

Stability of normal matter in contact with magmatter
The Callan-Rubakov mechanism for baryon catalysis is present for GUT type monopoles, but not present in monopoles derived from the latter stages of symmetry breaking. This means that GUT monopoles/dyons can catalyze baryon decay (and are thus useful for energy production in Conversion reactors and Conversion Drive propulsion), but the monopoles found in the dense substrate known as magmatter are non-catalyzing. Magmatter is therefore relatively stable and easy to handle when bound with conventional matter while still maintaining its useful properties of magnetic charge and great density.

Mark Friedenbach · 2014-08-30 09:51:06

If monopoles existed, why haven't we seen a single instance in all of our particle collision experiments?

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-08-30 14:46:47

One possible explanation would be that monopoles are so much more massive than protons and neutrons, that you'd have to concentrate a lot more energy into a much smaller volume of space than a proton, that they would be very hard to create. Now the article above is about a fictitious substance, some guesses were made as to the masses of the monopoles, but theory suggests that monopoles if they exist would be a lot more massive, and if you have a monopole equivalent to a proton, and a smaller monopole equivalent to the electron and a monopole neutron, the size of the monopole atom it would make would be about the size of an atomic nucleous. You could have magmatter molecules within the radius of the electron shell of one hydrogen atom. With the numbers they gave in the Orion's arm article I quoted from, the mass of one cubic meter of mag-carbon would be about 500 times the mass of our Sun, which if I am not mistaken, would put it within the event horizon of a black hole. Naturally a little bit of magmatter goes a long way, it would have to if not to form a black hole, it would be a dense form of matter and quite stable according to theory. Another interesting property is its ability to destabilize protons and neutrons, essentially converting normal matter it comes in contact with into energy, that is the application which would be of the most interest as far as propulsion is concerned, as you need only a small amount of magmatter to catalyze the conversion of matter to energy, and the other important property is the magmatter doesn't get used up, unlike antimatter, when it does this. So you could have a matter conversion engine without having to worry about storing tons of antimatter, if you want to have a starship that could travel near the speed of light.

Another application is you could drop a lump of magmatter into a gas giant and turn it into a small star!

Terraformer · 2014-08-31 03:23:14

Ah yes, the conversion drive. But do be careful when dropping stuff into gas giants, you don't want to destroy it within a few million years. The Negentropics wont like that. Then again, they won't like stellarising anyway, too wasteful... unless you enclose it in a Dyson swarm?

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-08-31 08:15:07

The thing about the magmatter is the rate of matter conversion is the rate at which normal matter can come in contact with it, a lump of magmatter is so small relative to its mass, that it will have to be dispersed in order to have an efficient rate of matter conversion, as not all the atoms can get to it at once, Another thing you could do is drop a lump of magmatter on a white dwarf or pulsar, and then some interesting things will begin to happen. You can also restellerize a dead star. A neutron star is made of iron atom nuclii, doesn't matter if it won't fuse producing energy, drop some mag matter on it and it will convert those iron atom nuclei into energy, maybe blow it back up into a star, an iron star! Assuming of course that the added mass don't collapse it into a black hole.

Another thing you could do with mag matter is create convenient gravity fields. Suppose you don't want to take a year to accelerate to near light speeds. If you can create a gravity field of about 300 gees you can accelerate to those relativistic velocities in about a day, just have a layer of magmatter in front of you and its gravity will pull you in the direction of travel with a force of about 300 times the Earth's gravity and your ship can accelerate forward at 301 times Earth's gravity, you can reach near light speeds in about a day, then you move away from the gravity source for the cruise. The magmatter also makes an excellent cosmic ray shield by the way.

Problem is slowing down, if you want to slow down at 301 gees and survive the magmatter will then have to be behind you, you may want to have a thinner magmatter shield in front of you to protect you from the cosmic rays as you do this.

Lets say the magmatter shield is sheathed in superconductng normal matter, the magmatter shield has a positive magnetic charge (North), the superconducting normal matter will create a dipolar magnetic field that repels the monopolarly charged magmatter, to keep it from coming in contact with it.. Lets say this shield is a disk 100 meters is radius and 1 meter thick, how much mass would we need to pack into that volume to create a 300 gee gravity field?

The disk would have to have a mass of 1,413,010,189,020,900,000 kg within that volume to generate 300 gees at the surface 1 meter from the disk, and this field should remain constant out to 100 meters from the flat disk's surface. 1.4E18 kg I scientific notation if that helps.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2014-08-31 08:41:20)

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-09-01 01:49:02

Another thing you could do with magmatter would be to terraform the Moon, the problem with the Moon is very simple really, the main thing is there is not enough gravity on the Moon to hold onto an atmosphere.

The Moon's mass is 7.15E+22 kg, its density is 3.340 g/cm^3, and its diameter is 3476 km.
The Earth's mass is 5.976E+24 kg, its density is 5.515 g/cm^3, and its diameter is 12756.28 km.
The Moon has 0.606 the density of the Earth,
and it has 0.272 the size of Earth, multiplying these two numbers together
you get a gravity of 0.165 that of Earth.
To get a gravity of 1 g you need to increase the Moon's mass to 6.060 of what it is now, which means you have to add 5.060 lunar masses to it, and while your at it, you might as well give it an axial tilt of 23.45 degrees and a rotational period of 23.9345 hours. The mass you would be adding to the Moon would be 3.6179E+23 kg, a very tiny proportion of that would consist of an atmosphere of 78% nitrogen, 20.9% oxygen, 0.93% Argon, 0.03% carbon dioxide, and 0.002% neon, and another little bit would be to provide oceans for the Moon.

But most of it would be in the form of a hollow sphere of magmatter, with holes in it, inserted underneath the lunar crust. Such insertions would be fairly easy if you could get the magmatter, first dig a geodysic network of tunnels under the Moon's surface, then insert the magmatter into the tunnels about 3.6179E+23 kg of magmatter, surround it with superconductors to prevent it from making contact with normal matter and you would increase the Moon's gravity to 1 g. After you did that, the Moon's atmosphere would stack to the same height as Earth's. You would need an atmospheric mass of 0.020123648 times Earth's to do this, the greenhouse effect would be about the same, a little bit more because gravity would decrease more with radius, since the Moon is starting out with a smaller radius, thus its Earthlike atmosphere would extend just a little bit more even with Earthlike gravity on its surface. The tides on Earth as a result of this would be 6.06 times what they are today, since the Moon would not have a complete global ocean Earth's tides on it wouldn't matter so much.

undormant · 2014-09-20 05:37:15

People bang on about Lunar not being able to hold onto an atmosphere.

If the moon can hold its atmosphere for 10 thousand years we could simply keep topping it up.

A Civilization capable of terraforming the body could do this.

Real pet hate of mine.

I see no reason for this obsession about a 'forever atmosphere' an all or nothing attitude to the issue when human Civilization only lasts 1000 years at a time anyway for the most part.

R

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-09-20 10:08:54

You do have to get the atmosphere from somewhere. A lunar atmosphere would have to stack 600 km high to get 1 bar on the surface. The Moon is 1,737.1 km in radius or 0.35 of a lunar radius Lunar gravity would be 0.55 of what it was at he surface that is 1.622 m/s² at the surface and 0.8921 m/s*2 at 600 km altitude, which would mean it would extend higher than that. My guess is you'd have to put a roof on top.

The picture here is somewhat misleading, a Lunar atmosphere like Earths would probably extend about half a lunar radius above its surface, probably close to 800 km as a back of the envelope guess. I would say the surface features would be fuzzy. The atmosphere would visibly extend above the planets surface.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2014-09-20 10:14:38)

Terraformer · 2014-09-22 14:10:22

Tom, the atmosphere wouldn't extend much further, because at such heights it is more of an inverse pyramid than a column. This was brought up in the discussion on Ceres.

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-09-23 06:41:52

Terraformer wrote:

Tom, the atmosphere wouldn't extend much further, because at such heights it is more of an inverse pyramid than a column. This was brought up in the discussion on Ceres.

How fare does Titan's atmosphere extend upward from its surface?

Terraformer · 2014-09-24 07:09:20

Well, it's 4.5x as dense as Terra's, so probably ~150km? Why?

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-09-24 13:49:28

Terraformer wrote:

Well, it's 4.5x as dense as Terra's, so probably ~150km? Why?

Titan is the closest body in the Solar System to a Terraformed Moon.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-08-05 08:30:20

The magnetic monopole is a hypothetical particle that is an isolated magnet with only one magnetic pole it could be a north pole without a south pole or vice versa, Some condensed matter systems contain effective (non-isolated) magnetic monopole quasi-particles a similar state but different, quantum theory of magnetic charge started with a paper by the physicist Paul Dirac in 1931.
http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/ … 133/821/60
Various condensed-matter physics groups have now used the term "magnetic monopole" to describe a different and largely unrelated phenomenon.
https://physicsworld.com/a/magnetic-mon … spin-ices/
Some researchers now use the term magnetricity to describe the manipulation of magnetic monopole quasiparticles in spin ice.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 … 085916.htm

Magmatter a scifi form of exotic matter which is made up of extremely small atom-like particles

South Korean Experts Seek To Verify Room-Temperature Superconductor Claim
https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/0 … ctor-claim

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-08-05 08:33:13)

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#1 2014-08-29 18:31:56

Magmatter: Does it exist?

#2 2014-08-30 09:51:06

Re: Magmatter: Does it exist?

#3 2014-08-30 14:46:47

Re: Magmatter: Does it exist?

#4 2014-08-31 03:23:14

Re: Magmatter: Does it exist?

#5 2014-08-31 08:15:07

Re: Magmatter: Does it exist?

#6 2014-09-01 01:49:02

Re: Magmatter: Does it exist?

#7 2014-09-20 05:37:15

Re: Magmatter: Does it exist?

#8 2014-09-20 10:08:54

Re: Magmatter: Does it exist?

#9 2014-09-22 14:10:22

Re: Magmatter: Does it exist?

#10 2014-09-23 06:41:52

Re: Magmatter: Does it exist?

#11 2014-09-24 07:09:20

Re: Magmatter: Does it exist?

#12 2014-09-24 13:49:28

Re: Magmatter: Does it exist?

#13 2023-08-05 08:30:20

Re: Magmatter: Does it exist?

Board footer